Sacked Telkom manager sues for Sh60.7 million

What you need to know:

  • Anne Njeri Nyagah, who was working as head of Customer Care until her dismissal in April, has sued the company for Sh60.7 million for terminating her employment without warning or notice.
  • She says the firm elevated her job position to that of director customer experience and promptly recruited a foreigner.

A former employee of Telkom Kenya is in court seeking millions of shillings from the telecommunications firm for wrongful dismissal and replacing her with a foreigner.

Anne Njeri Nyagah, who was working as head of Customer Care until her dismissal in April, has sued the company for Sh60.7 million for terminating her employment without warning or notice.

She says the firm elevated her job position to that of director customer experience and promptly recruited a foreigner.

According to the Telkom Kenya website, the current director, Customer Experience is Jackie Aritua Rozario.

In documents filed at the Employment and Labour Relations Court, Ms Nyagah contends that the new position was not advertised or competitively recruited and she terms the choice of a foreigner as discriminative.

“She was never given an opportunity to apply and be interviewed for the said position. Indeed, the recruitment of the position was sourced from another country while the skills required for the position are readily available in Kenya,” said her lawyer David Onsare.

“Since the introduction of the position she has been subjected to untold humiliation, discrimination, intimidation and harassment with the sole intention of frustrating her and force her to quit her job an option she refused to exercise thereby leading to the termination of her employment by the respondent,” said Mr Onsare.

However, the firm said that she was sacked for demanding to know the rationale of introducing the new position.

Ms Rozario was the head of operations at Multichoice Kenya before joining the telco having previously worked at Airtel Kenya and Airtel Uganda as Head of Retail Operations and Head of Contact Experience respectively.