Kisumu county government suffered a major blow after the Industrial Court ordered that the five sacked county Executive Committee members be paid Sh18 million.
Vincent Kodera (Roads), Stephen Orot (Agriculture), Rhoda Obadha (Environment), Joseph Okal (Finance) and Barack Abonyo (Water) were awarded Sh3.6 million each.
The petitioners moved to court to challenge their dismissal by Governor Jack Ranguma over alleged incompetence on January 30, 2015.
They said their rights were violated when they were removed from office without being accorded a hearing.
Justice Maureen Onyango said the petitioners were unconstitutionally sacked by Governor Ranguma.
In delivering the ruling last week on Friday, she directed the county government to pay cost of the suit.
K’Odera, Orot and Abonyo told the court that their sack is unconstitutional and wanted court to compel the government to pay them for the remaining period of they were expected to serve.
“The termination violates applicants’ constitutional rights and is capricious, arbitrary, and injudicious and founded on impunity and misguided absolutism,” said lawyer Victor Obondi.
He argued that the executives were not given a fair hearing before terminating their contracts, which he said goes against the principles of natural justice.
Kodera said he is a professional engineer and questioned the “incompetence tag” the governor used to sack him.
“It is defamatory for the governor to label me as incompetent while my record speaks for itself in the Roads department,” he said.
Okal and Obadha were represented by lawyer Ken Okong’o who told the judge that the two had been dropped unconstitutionally.
He said their sacking violated constitutional rights under Articles 27 (1) and (2), 30, 41, 47 (1) and (2), 50 (1) and 23 (1) of the Constitution.
The county government through lawyer Geoffrey Yogo said the five were procedurally sacked.
Okal was replaced by George Ongaya, who was the Communication executive.
Michael Otieno from the World Bank is the new Communication executive.
Orot was replaced by Henry Obade while the Water and Irrigation department that was headed by Abonyo has been merged with Environment.
Hanif Rana was moved from Industrialisation to Roads, replacing Kodera. Johnson Odero heads the Industrialisation docket.
Ranguma appointed William Ojuang to head the new Water, Environment and Natural Resources docket.
He said some of the departments have been merged to save on soaring recurrent expenditures.
Ranguma said the sacked executives had vested interests, thereby affecting county development.
He said the changes are aimed at strengthening service delivery to residents.