Parastatals workers in strike threat over salary deductions

Communication Workers Union Secretary General Benson Okwaro (centre) with other union leaders addressing journalists in Nakuru on February 27, 2016.

The union wants Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and the Postal Corporation of Kenya to remit more than Sh500 million deducted from workers’ salaries over the past seven months. PHOTO | SULEIMAN MBAIAH | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Both KBC and PCK were hit by financial difficulties following the liberalisation of the communications industry.

  • Pension schemes were owed Sh400 million as at January this year, while savings and credit cooperative societies were owed Sh150 million.

  • Banks where members have acquired loans are owed more than Sh50 million.

  • Members could no longer access bank loans since they had been blacklisted for non-payment of loans.

Workers in two state corporations have threatened to go on strike in two weeks unless all deductions from their salaries are remitted to the respective bodies.

The Communication Workers Union wants Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and the Postal Corporation of Kenya to remit more than Sh500 million deducted from workers’ salaries over the past seven months.

Both KBC and PCK were hit by financial difficulties following the liberalisation of the communications industry.

Union secretary-general Benson Okwaro said the union will ask its members to down their tools if the remittances will not have been done by June 30.

“We don’t care what financial difficulties these two state corporations are going through, and since this is not a new collective bargaining agreement we are negotiating, we demand immediate remittance of members’ money to all statutory bodies they have subscribed to,” said Mr Okwaro.

PENSION SCHEMES

He said pension schemes were owed Sh400 million as at January this year, while savings and credit cooperative societies were owed Sh150 million.

Banks where members have acquired loans are owed more than Sh50 million.

“In April, Kenya Commercial Bank withheld the PCK workers’ salaries for eight days, and as we speak, our members who access their salaries through the bank have not been paid their May salaries,” said Mr Okwaro.

He further wants President Uhuru Kenyatta to sack the chief executives of the two corporations.

“This is poor management and our humble request to President Kenyatta is to sack the CEOs before the two corporations sink,” said Mr Okwaro.

ACCESS BANK LOANS

Members could no longer access bank loans since they had been blacklisted for non-payment of loans while saccos were not paying dividends to members, he added.

Mr Okwaro said the more than 3,000 members from the two corporations had suffered financial embarrassment since November last year.

“As a union, we shall not sit and watch as our members, who pay us to represent them, suffer,” added Mr Okwaro.

He was speaking in Nakuru during the union board’s first biannual general meeting at Eros Hotel, Mr Okwaro said the two state corporations had not remitted money to saccos, pension schemes and insurance companies, among others.

Mr Okwaro, who is also the deputy secretary-general of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions, accused the two state corporations of doing business with members’ money.