Seven sacked employees sue NSE for Sh40 million

Seven former Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) employees have sued the bourse for Sh40 million over alleged wrongful termination in February.

The senior managers were some of eight workers the company declared following a decline in trading that slashed its earnings amid high costs.

Through their lawyers, Tom Kimaru, Bahati Morara, Caleb Musau, Nelly Orwaya, Lillian Mbula, Winnie Mbaluka, and Sammy Mutua said their roles were quickly filled up with new employees hence were not redundant but were unfairly targeted in the exercise.

“The exercise was undertaken irregularly, maliciously, constituted the torts of deceit, injury to reputation, malicious falsehood and defamation,” the former workers said.

They claim that on February 25, 2019, NSE Chief Executive Geoffrey Odundo summoned them separately and told them the company board had decided to change the organisational structure, which would render them redundant.

They say Mr Odundo did not say which criteria the NSE used to single them out since he did not provide the minutes of the board meeting where the resolution was reached to sack them.

Two days later they were served with letters of redundancy notifying them their jobs had been terminated.

Their lawyer argues that NSE immediately replaced the claimants with other employees to undertake the specific duties carried out by the claimants.

The bourse declined to comment about the suit stating that the matter was before courts.

“The issue is currently under litigation and we are not in a position to comment on an open court matter,” NSE said in a statement.