At least 20 tea clerks from Kipkebe Tea estates in Nyamira County have been fired following claims that they have been engaging in unscrupulous activities, a senior company official has revealed.
The company also retired ten more clerks on Tuesday and issued a stern warning to other workers over participating in corruption related activities with tea pickers in the region.
Speaking at Magura estates during a fundraiser towards bright students to company workers, deputy director Field services Mr Elkana Mokua said the decision was viable since the company had carried out independent investigations to warrant the dismissal.
“The company doesn’t tolerate corruption and we had to dismiss them. It’s really sad that they can engage in defrauding poor casual laborers by altering the weighing machines. We are confident that the investigations were credible and we are ready as a company for challenge,” he said.
According to him, the company had given the accused fair hearing and failed to vindicate themselves leading to their unexpected dismissal.
“This should be a lesson to all those who survived. We gave the accused humble time to defend them but could still not convince the management. Those who were retired were due to age since we want more energetic employees,” he added.
He said tea pickers had lost thousands of shillings to the tea clerks with few bribing them to get advantage in terms of the number of kilograms managed per month.
“We love tea pickers and we would not sit watching few people pocket their hard work rewards. The move was worthwhile,” Mokua said.