It’s good from far, but far from good. That’s how an employee of national broadcaster KBC described the company to a fresh graduate who was hoping get employed there.
With its fair share of problems – from not-so-modern equipment to poor pay – Kenya Broadcasting Corporation is not a place for the faint-hearted. Some employees have not received their salaries for the last eight months, yet they keep rolling their cameras and working the mics to deliver news and other programmes to their radio and TV audience.
In fact, by the time of publishing this article, the October salaries had not hit the accounts of contracted employees, mostly TV and radio journalists.
KBC has a huge chunk of employees on contract – known internally as ‘artists’ – forming the squad that trawls towns and shopping centres across the country for news and features. Yet for all their effort – they handle over 70% of the work, according to an insider – they remain a very unhappy and poor lot.
It’s mid-November, when employees in other organisations are expecting mid-month advance, but KBC’s artists can only wait – and hope. “The county correspondents are hardest hit as they have not been paid since March 2015,” said a senior manager at KBC, who has worked there for over 10 years. “They are surviving by God’s grace.”
These artists work on a three-month renewable contract and some have toiled for as long as seven years under these terms. The three-month model is used to evade the requirement to automatically employ a worker who has been a casual for at least six months.
In fact, said the manager, some arrears go way back to last year and now a good number of county correspondents who cannot secure enough handouts from news sources to keep them going have stopped sending stories while others, frustrated by the status quo, have quit. “The thing is if you are a contracted employee no one cares,” said a KBC journalist, who requested not to be named. “You’ll be paid when the bosses feel like.”
For all its woes, permanent employees have their salaries paid on time. But for artists, morale is so low especially at the head offices in Nairobi that some have stopped reporting to work.
Managers trading with salaries?
The salary delays are not related to the ongoing cash shortage in government since this has been trending for some time. An insider says the delay is a deliberate scheme by top management who conspire to hoard salary funds for their own gains.
A person familiar with KBC’s HR and finance operations says usually the money meant for contract employees is first transferred to a private fixed deposit account for a certain period to earn interest before being wired back, of course, minus the earnings. “The issue of that fixed account I just hear about it,” said the employee who believes KBC is far from good but still wakes up every morning to work for it. “I can’t rule it out.”
The money being made is good, given that contract employees earn between Ksh42,000 (diploma holders) and Ksh50,000 (graduates), after the pay was reviewed early this year from the measly Ksh18,000. BusinessToday was not able to establish the number of artists at KBC, but sources figure it at over half of KBC’s staff component.
To add insult to injury, the artists are forced to pay for NHIF and NSSF contributions. According to the payment details, KBC accounts office deducts these two statutory contributions yet they are never remitted to these two bodies.
But what has also raised eyebrows is the fact that some of those who choose to leave are never expunged from the payroll which means, according to our sources say, this money could be ending up in some managers’ pockets or some people draw salaries as ghost workers.
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