Kemsa accountant moves to court over transfer to Mombasa

An accountant at Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) has moved to court to challenge the CEO’s decision to transfer her from Nairobi to Mombasa last year.

Christine Nyambura Mwangi claims her transfer is based on malice and insubordination as the CEO Terry Ramadhan, had been ordered to reverse the decisions she had made regarding staff deployments by the then Health Principal Secretary Susan Mochache.

She claims that the then Health PS had directed the CEO to rescind her decision for deployment following a  memo emanating from the Head of Public Service which advised government agencies to maintain the status quo during the transition from the foutth Administration to the fifth administration.

“Despite the clear and unambiguous directions from the Principal Secretary, Ministry of Health the CEO has not rescinded the decisions she had made regarding staff deployments,” notes Mwangi in court documents.

According to Mwangi, the CEO’s decision to deploy her emanated from queries she raised regarding payments that were to be made to Oraro & Co Advocates for legal services rendered to Kemsa.

She claims from an internal memo dated April 13, 2022, it was evident that procurement procedures were not followed in procuring the services of Oraro & Co Advocate.

It is her case that fees notes dated January 20, 2022 for the law firm had been received and it was not clear why the same fee notes were being presented again to Kemsa on October 18, 2022.

The Kemsa CEO required her to report to and be allocated duties by the head of the depot Mombasa which she claims is a lower ranking officer than herself.

It is her case that the CEO did not seek the authority of the Kemsa Board of Directors before redeploying her to Mombasa as she ought to have done.

She wants the Employment and Labour Relations court to prevent the CEO from transferring, re-deploying, demoting or in any other manner interfering with her responsibilities. She claims Mombasa depot of Kemsa holds third party stocks and no accounting work is carried out at the said depot.

“The first Respondent caused me to be stripped of my rights in Kemsa’s ERP system and thus making it impossible for me to effectively discharge my duties even if it was possible to work from Mombasa,” she says in court documents.

Mwangi claims she was called by the acting Finance Manager to discuss various processing of various payments and she brought to his attention a fee note from Oraro & Co Advocates had been received and was under review to confirm that all documentation was in order.

She says on October 21, 2022 at about 3:50 p.m. she was summoned to the CEO’s  office whereby the CEO, the Acting Finance Manager as well as the Payables Accountant were present.