Employ people on the basis of qualification

By Ferdinand Mwongela

KENYA: I have been thinking of taking to the streets or hiring a protest organiser and instruct him to print me some colourfully worded posters and placards. I hear they are all over the place and that their services are quite affordable, these protest organisers.

Plus, there is no need to be original. Just sing ‘haki yetu’, brandish a couple of stones and generally be a nuisance before teargas and gunshots in the air ruthlessly disperse my peaceful protest. Believe me, originality is overrated.

And again, be advised, I won’t be protesting against those desperate wannabes who attempt improvising ‘gated communities’ within estates by blocking streets inconveniencing panya root users. Or that sickly looking bank balance. 

My bone of contention would be that there is no bone getting to common mwananchi. I have espied quite a few bars coming up in the neighbourhood and surprisingly all the employees are ‘foreigners’.

Meanwhile, if the rate at which bars are mushrooming all over is anything to go by, a friend joked that each bar owner will end up having only their friends and family members as customers. And I digress.

Pretty

These ‘foreigners’ (read men and pretty looking lasses) are always ‘imported’ from other parts of the city, yet we have jobless youngmen and women from the neigbourhood who can do the job. Must they bribe someone to get such jobs? Seriously?

Folks, I am not being naïve. Common sense dictates that in the event jobs are created, locals ought to be given first priority. I mean, that argument about Kenya belonging to everyone must is misguided and in fact a lie.

The said crazy idea germinated on my mind the other day after watching someone on the news claim that some supermarket had a rough time opening up a branch somewhere — in this country— because they had not hired locals. The ensuing debate on social media also provided a unique peep at what goes on in the minds of many Kenyans.

Not long ago, I heard that my Alma Mater, Moi University, was getting into some difficulties with the local population over, you guessed right, hiring of locals.

Throw in Tullow Oil’s predicament not long ago in Turkana. Or the regular circus that is the Kenya Ports of Authority and appointments from ‘bara’ (mainland) and you have an unholy brew. Not very different from what Mututho was fighting, only that the one Mututho fights is lethal.

Ladies and gentlemen, these cases of people complaining about ‘locals’ being denied jobs at the expense of ‘foreigners’ have become commonplace. What happened to giving people equal opportunities?

It is my esteemed view that employers hire people just on the basis of how qualified they are. This idea of job creators only hiring their kin or people they personally know has to come to an end. Someone has to part with a bribe in this country before getting a simple job such a bar tenders? We are headed in the wrong direction.