This archive report was first published on 5 June 2020.
Published on June 5, 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown Kenya into one of the worst employment crises it has faced.
According to multiple interviews and public data, at least one million Kenyans have lost their jobs or been put on indefinite unpaid leave.
The worst-hit companies are in the tourism, transport, horticulture, communication, and education sectors.
Kenya Airways, for instance, has seen its more than 4,000 employees wait for a government bailout and the lifting of travel restrictions, with the pay of a majority of its staff cut by 75 per cent.
"If you are in a department where there is no work, such as pilots and cabin crew, you will stay at home the whole month. But engineers report for one week and are on leave the next, since aircraft have to be maintained even when parked," a member of staff said.
Bridge International Academies, a low-cost private school chain, sent hundreds of teachers and other staff on compulsory leave in March, citing a "temporary lay-off" during which the organisation would not expect them to work and would not be obligated to pay salaries.
Private schools employ hundreds of thousands of teachers and other support staff, and their pain is shared by others in more than 1,932 private secondary and 8,000 private primary schools in the country.
"Private schools entirely depend on the school fees paid by parents, meaning if this pandemic continues, most of these schools will cease to exist," Private Schools Association chief executive Peter Ndoro warned.
Security guards, too, have been affected, with hundreds of them left without jobs due to the pandemic.
"When hotels shut down, the guards were released," said Mr Evans Muriu, a communication manager at SecurKenya Group Ltd.
Before the Covid-19 crisis, the private security business was thriving, with over 2,000 firms employing as many as 700,000 guards, making it the biggest employer in the country.
However, a majority of these men and women have been rendered jobless.
The horticultural sector, which employed over 150,000 Kenyans directly and another 500,000 indirectly, is also on the line.
According to the Alcohol Beverages Association of Kenya, bars previously employed over 250,000 people, many of them on a daily wage.
President Uhuru Kenyatta said that more than half a million Kenyans could lose their jobs in the next six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
But nothing can best illustrate the pain of employees and the unemployment crisis than last week's decision by the Fairmont Norfolk, an iconic hotel in Nairobi, to shut down indefinitely and fire all employees.
"Due to the uncertainty of when and how the impact of the global pandemic will affect the business picking up in the near future, we are left with no option but to close down the business indefinitely," the firm's country manager Mehdi Morad said in a memo.
