Agency defends master's degree rule for CA jobs

A State agency has defended a master’s degree requirement for two senior positions at the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) advertised last month, on grounds that they are technical positions requiring a higher level of competence.

In response to a petition challenging the requirement, the State Corporations Advisory Committee (SCAC) said the two positions — director of frequency spectrum management and director of competition management — will also form a pool from which a successor to the director general position would be sourced.

The case was filed by Anthony Manyara arguing that the move is illegal and is meant to lock out deserving members of staff from being promoted, and also prevent qualified members of the public from applying for the jobs.

Employment and labour relations court last month froze the recruitment, pending the determination of the case. Other than the two positions, CA also announced 43 positions to be filled internally.

Mr Manyara went to court saying the advertisements were issued using new human resource policies and guidelines, prepared by SCAC, which requires all serving and prospective employees from the position of assistant manager and above to have a minimum academic qualification of a master’s degree.

He said the new HR tools are meant to lock out deserving members of staff from being promoted because the positions require applicants to have undertaken supervisory or management courses, for between two and four weeks, from a recognized institution.

Mr Manyara says soon after the advertisements were made, the HR department at CA scheduled trainings for an identified staff to undertake supervisory and senior management courses at the Kenya School of Government.

“The petitioners avers that, the training schedule gives unfair advantage to the staff whose training have been timed to take place before the deadline for the submissions of the applications,”

He says the policies and guidelines developed by SCAC for CA are therefore illegal as they also seek to convert the employment of all serving directors from permanent and pensionable to employment on contract.