Court dismisses University of Nairobi employees’ pay claim
The University of Nairobi entrance. The Kenyan government has mandated that all payments to the University of Nairobi be made via the eCitizen platform. FILE PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NMG
The High Court has thrown out a Sh8 million claim by 45 University of Nairobi staff for being time-barred.
Justice Stella Rutto stated that the suit had been caught up by the limitation of time, therefore, no action on the issue could be sustained.
“Therefore, from 1st July 2011, the claimants had three years to move the Court to seek the payments they now claim. However, they waited until 30th March 2017 to file the instant suit. This was close to six years after the claimants had been notified that the 1st respondent’s Vice Chancellor had refused to approve payment of their claim due to policy requirements. By then, the suit was time-barred and had been caught by limitation of time and no action based on the issue could be sustained,” said the Employment and Labour Relations Court.
The applicants told the court that they have been working in the Biochemistry Department of the College of Health Sciences as professors, lecturers, drivers, technologists, technicians and cleaners.
They had been engaged as service providers for module II (self-sponsored) students between 2004 and 2011 but the university refused to pay them for their services.
They were only paid for the period between July 2008 and April 2011 leaving a balance of Sh8,632,115.63 for the period between 2004 and 2008.
The complainants told the court that the Biochemistry Department was entitled to 30 percent of all the tuition fees collected from the module II students.
The University of Nairobi defended itself by claiming that employees working under the module II programme are remunerated following strict adherence to the university policy on Module II fees distribution.
It claimed that the pay was merely a motivational pay to staff from the parallel degree programmes.
The university also claimed that the suit was barred by law as it had been filed more than three years after the claim had arisen.
Justice Rutto noted that section 90 of the Employment Act placed a time bar on claims that had been instigated three years after the time when the issue arose.
She noted that as of July 1, 2011, the complainants knew that the university was not willing to honour the payments but they waited till six years had lapsed for them to seek the court's intervention.
The court noted that since the suit was time-barred it did not then have the jurisdiction to determine whether the applicants were entitled to the Sh8 million payment.
