Kisumu All Stars players strike

What you need to know:

  • Struggling Otenga sent home Henry Omino on January 6 after a streak of poor performances.
  • They are 16th on the log with nine points having played 17 matches.

A section of Kisumu All Stars players have staged a protest over non-payment of six-months' salaries by the club's management.

A total of 17 players signed to the club this season staged a sit in at the Kisumu County offices corridors on Thursday protesting what they termed as 'empty promises of payment' by the County government, who are the official sponsors of the team.

Speaking to Nation Sport, the players revealed their sufferings due to lack of money.

"A number of us have been locked out of our houses because we cannot afford to pay rent, we have dependents who we no longer can afford to care for, yet the county keeps claiming we are being incited to protest whenever we ask for payment," said one of the players who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We have been promised a number of times that payment will be done yet to date we stare at empty bank accounts. We are demotivated because according to the contracts we signed, we are employees of the county and are not allowed to work elsewhere so our hands are tied.”

The county owes each of the 17 players between Sh52,000 to Sh56,000, which is an accumulation of six-months salaries.

According to the Sports Chief Officer, Thomas Ouko, the delay has been brought about by failure of some of the players signed into the team this season to provide the needed documentation on time.

Ouko revealed to Nation Sport that a total of 21 members of the team, who had been remunerated last week are old staff who had their names in the Human Resource Payment system, something he said eased the process of payment.

“We received documentation of some of the 17 players from the Team’s board on December 19, however, one is yet to submit all the documents and this is dragging the process because all payments need to be done once all files are complete,” said Ouko.

Struggling Otenga sent home Henry Omino on January 6 after a streak of poor performances. They are 16th on the log with nine points having played 17 matches.