ANNETTE WAMBULWA

Mandera county has been ordered by a court to pay salaries to four county executive committee members whose contracts were terminated by Governor Ali Roba’s administration.

Employment and Labour Court judge Onesmus Makau said the county had not paid the salaries and outstanding arrears as had earlier been directed by his court.

Last year, the court ruled in favour of the four CECs and quashed their termination by the county government. The county was directed to pay them gratuity earned as at the date of termination plus salary for the remainder of their term.

However, the county did not heed the directive prompting Abdiazizi Sheikh Maad, Shamsa Mohammed Haji, Johora Mohamed Abdi and Hassan Mohamed Ahmed to move to court.

Makau said the county had not paid the CECs all their salaries for the unexpired term of the respective contracts of service even after issuing orders to that effect.

“I have further found that the judgment dated April 29, 2020 did not give the county the option of withholding or investing the petitioner’s gratuity until they clear with the county government.”

Makau ordered the county to compute the outstanding salary payable to each of the former CECs with less PAYE within the next 30 days.

The court ruled that the the petitioners are entitled to salary set by SRC being Sh259,875 multiplied by the 32 months outstanding in their contract which comes to 8,316,000 each.

The CECs argued that their salary for the remainder of their contract term should include all their allowances. The county however says only basic pay should be used to compute their salaries for that period.

Justice Makau said he had considered both arguments and to him it was clear that the first three CECs salary was consolidated and SRC did not wish to give details of the allowances which constituted 40 per cent of the consolidated salary.

“It is also clear that the said petitioners were entitled to other allowances and benefits by reason of their actual service to the public and the performance of their contract including airtime, official transport, daily subsistence allowance, medical insurance, other insurances and mortgage,” the court ruled.

The allowances above should be excluded from their salaries and will not be used to compute their salaries for the unexpired period of the contract term.

However, the fourth CEC salary is different because the component of his remuneration to be considered in computing his gross salary is the basic salary plus house allowance.

According to court, his monthly basic salary was not fixed like for the other CECs noting that in 2020/2021, it was Sh138,400, in 2021/2022 Sh145,150 and from March 2022 was Sh152,010.

The CECs had claimed that the county owed them Sh14.529,993.75, Sh. 12,033,021,4, Sh13,253,678.09 and Sh10,878,978.06 respectively.

Source: The Star