The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has started the process of recruiting a new director-general to replace Wang’ombe Kariuki whose term ends in January.
Mr Kariuki was appointed in January 2013 as the first director-general at the authority, serving for two terms of five years each. Earlier, he had served in the same post in an acting capacity for one-and-a-half years from August 2011.
The CAK has invited applicants for the position targeting economics, statistics, law, and business professionals with at least 15 years of relevant work experience.
“We are seeking to recruit a highly experienced, competent, motivated, and self-driven leader, with excellent credentials and a strategic mind, to competitively fill the director general position,” reads the notice.
It is during Mr Kariuki’s tenure at the CAK that efforts to protect consumer and employee rights was intensified. This is seen in legislation demanding that merged firms retain workers, supermarket owners pay suppliers on time and retailers refund overcharged consumers.
For example, the CAK saved 12,470 jobs in 2020 after imposing tough conditions requiring firms that merged or acquired other companies to retain the majority of their workforce for up to three years.
KCB, which concluded the merger in September 2019, was barred from firing workers for two years to 2021 while NCBA was given 12 months to the end of 2020.
In 2018, the CAK established a Buyer Power Department mandated to protect suppliers of supermarket chains from exploitation. This was following mounting concerns over the negative influence that businesses have had over suppliers, which is blamed for the collapse of Nakumatt and Uchumi supermarkets.
The two retail chains had accumulated supplier debt of nearly Sh20 billion by the time of the collapse.
Buyer power means the ability of a purchaser to extract more favourable terms from a supplier on whom it can also impose significant opportunity costs by, for example, delaying payments.
At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the CAK ordered Cleanshelf Supermarkets to contact and refund all customers who bought Tropikal hand sanitiser at inflated prices. Sales for hand sanitisers had spiked since Kenya reported its first coronavirus case in March 2020.
