A report by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has indicated that there was a high ethnic employee preference at the Office of the Deputy President during Rigathi Gachagua’s reign before his impeachment.
After a review of personnel records for the 2023/2024 financial year, Gathungu’s report showed the office had 542 employees. However, 249 of them, representing 46%, were from one ethnic community.
This was in contravention of Sections 7(1) and 7(2) of the National Cohesion and Integration Act of 2008.
The Act provides that all public installments shall seek to represent the diversity of the people of Kenya in the employment of staff, and no public establishment shall have more than one-third of its staff from the same community.
Also, during the period under review and in breach of the law, 42 of the employees received a net salary less than one-third of their basic salary in different months
Notably, Section 19 (3) of the Employment Act, 2007 orders that all deductions made from an employee’s wage shall not exceed two-thirds of their pay.
