This archive report was first published on 15 August 2019.
Kenya's National Social Securities Fund (NSSF) has been at the center of a controversy surrounding ethnic imbalance in job distribution. A report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, August 15, 2019, revealed that the Kamba, Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luo, and Luhya communities hold 74.9% of the 1,307 jobs at the agency.
The big five ethnic groups dominate jobs at the NSSF, squeezing out opportunities for others. Together, they hold 980 jobs, leaving the remaining 43 ethnic groups to share the remaining 327 slots, which is just 25% of the available positions.
NSSF human resource manager Carolyn Okul attributed the imbalance to the fact that marginalized groups do not apply for jobs as much as the adverts encourage. According to Okul, the Kambas account for 17% of job positions, Kalenjin 16.8%, Kikuyu 14.6%, Luo 14.1%, and Luhya 12.2%.
Notably, the Kambas, Kalenjin, and Luos are over-represented in terms of ratio between the national population and employment proportion in NSSF. The revelation comes at a time when the Auditor-General Edward Ouko noted that the NSSF has hit hard ground in projects running into billions of shillings due to bad decisions.
Most senior managers at the NSSF are on acting capacity, which MPs noted was a matter of concern since it has a bearing on efficiency at the agency. The Auditor-General's report also highlighted the NSSF's failure to recover a significant portion of the sale price of a piece of land sold in November 2011, earning only a tenth of the sale price.
