Ethnicity and tribalism thrives in Nairobi County.
An Audit report on responses to queries in the Auditor General’s report on Nairobi City County Executive for the financial year 2018-2019 has revealed.
The report tabled before the County Assembly Public Accounts Committee, said that this has led to non-Compliance with the Law on Ethnic Composition.
During the year under review, the total number of employees in the County was 11,926 members out of which 5,496 employees representing 46% of the total work force were from one ethnic community.
The Audit said this is contrary to Section 7(1) and (2) of the National Cohesion and Integration Act, 2008.
The Act states that, “all public offices shall seek to represent the diversity of the people of Kenya in employment of staff and that no public institution shall have more than one third of its staff establishment from the same ethnic community”.
In the circumstances, the County is in breach of the law.
The Audit said.
However, City Hall responded to the Auditor by saying that the staffs of Nairobi City County are classified into three categories.
The first category is staff devolved from the National Government as at June 2019 payroll data per Ethnicity and pay group as follows; i.Staffs inherited from the Defunct Nairobi City Council ii.Staffs employed by the County Public Service Board iii. County Executive Committee members
“From the above, the County has no control on composition of staff inherited from former City Council as these are staff employed over 20 years ago even before the enactment of national Cohesion and Integration Act 2008,” City Hall said.
The executive went on to say that this law cannot therefore be applied retrospectively.
“The Staff inherited from Former City Council has one ethnic community representing over 52% of entire inherited staff. However, this issue will be resolved through natural attrition as staffs cannot be discriminated due to ethnic bias” the executive said.
City Hall told the Auditor that for other class of staff, their composition complies with the law of ethnic distribution as at June 2019.
In 2014, another Audit revealed that 2,500 blood relatives work at City Hall.
The Audit revealed that 3,457 workers are from the same region.