Chaos as city postpones hiring without notice

Thousands of job seekers turned rowdy on Monday after a recruitment exercise at Nairobi's City Inspectorate Training School in Dagoretti was postponed for the third time without notice.

Disappointed, the youths barricaded the busy Ngong Road, lit bonfires with old tyres and pelted motorists with stones as they expressed their frustrations.

They were seeking to be hired as county constables and county firefighters.

By as early as 6am, thousands of them had already arrived at the venue following a county advertisement published in local dailies on May 27 that 600 people would be hired today.

The county had shortlisted 4,069 for the 500 available slots for the position of constables and 1,690 for 100 firefighter vacancies.

DEMAND

After hours of waiting for county officials and no communication about what was happening, they marched to Ngong Road to express their anger.

According to one of them, Walter Oduor, they were barred at the gate from entering the facility as the security guards seemed unaware of any activity at the school.

“Who told you to come here…go to City Hall, we do not have any information of recruitment slotted for today,” an officer told them.

They demanded that Governor Evans Kidero announce that there were no vacancies instead of playing cat-and-mouse games with them.

They also demanded to be told whether the vacancies had been filled and the exercise was just being used as a formality.

“We are here just because of formality reasons, the county has already hired some people as they have received text messages and calling letters.

"We just need the county to come out and tell us there are no jobs instead of wasting our time,” said Francis Shivelege, a recruit.

HUGE COSTS

A frustrated Alex Amiso, who had travelled twice from Turkana County, could not hide his frustration, having incurred travel expenses twice only for the exercise to be cancelled.

He said he had applied to be hired a traffic marshal. Candidates were made to run 10km last year as part of the hiring process but to date, they are still waiting.

Others who showed up had been taken to the National Youth Service (NYS) training programme on Dr Kidero’s directive and were assigned to city beautification work ahead of then US President Barack Obama's visit.

They were, however, dismissed unceremoniously, some without pay, they said.

Felix Wanjika, who was among those in the NYS, said the county withheld their NYS certificates but had not offered them jobs.

"We want our certificates from NYS and also our dues for the Obama beautification, we were promised these jobs since 2015," said Mr Wanjika.

CONFUSION

An advert on the Nairobi County Public Service Board website and a public notice in a local daily on February 17 had invited shortlisted candidates for interviews for constables and firefighters but postponed them until June 12.

But speaking by phone, Philip Kungu, the county executive chairman for the service board, said a notice announcing the cancellation of the exercise had been issued and published in local dailies on Saturday.

Conflicting information on the postponement was also noted as a city communications officer said the notice was published on Friday, though it could not be found.

The vacancies were advertised in June 2016 while the shortlisting was done in June this year.