Minimum wage increase dashed workers’ hopes for better pay

COTU choir performs during Labour Day celebrations at Uhuru Park, Nairobi. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

This year’s Labour Day turned out to be an anticlimactic occasion for the Kenyan workers. President Uhuru Kenyatta attempted to achieve the impossible- appeasing both the workers and employers.  

He raised the minimum wage-or the lowest wage permitted by law-in Mombasa, Kisumu and Nairobi by five per cent from the current Sh19,831 to Sh20,822. The pronouncement was preceded by a lot of canvasing from both sides, with employers urging the President not to whimsically raise the minimum wage. The Secretary General of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) Francis Atwoli had made a pitch for an 18 per cent increase in the minimum wage.