Retrenchment ruined my future, says ex-railway technician

An aerial view of Kenya railways station in Nairobi. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

“I am dying... I wasted my career in railways and now I am here dying,” says 54-year-old Kenya Railways retiree Kimiti Kariuki. His testimony reflects the painful experience of a former employee struggling to make ends meet after losing his job. He does not deny that he is bitter that he was given hope and grabbed it at his youthful age when he considered himself resourceful.

“I was hired by Kenya Railways Corporation as a trainee locomotive engineer and driver in 1987 and enrolled for a seven-year course in locomotive engineering,” says Kariuki. It was the beginning of what he considered as a promising journey to actualising his dreams, which he later learnt, was a false signal.

With surging bitterness that often drives him to curse the past management he believed to be behind his woes, Kariuki decries the injustices that have rocked the country after independence.

Alleged differences with some officials of the Kenya Railways saw him in the bad books. It started almost immediately after he started working as a driver and technician in 1994.

“At some point, there was a plan to loot some cargo and I was against it. I was immediately relocated to passenger train,” says Kariuki.

He thought the relocation marked the end of his woes and that he would work without challenges, but he was wrong.

Kariuki says he clashed with the authorities in 1995 when he was nominated as the railway workers’ assistant secretary general. “I was advocating for salary increment for all the workers and that did not augur well with our bosses; I was arrested and later released,” he says.

Then he was retrenched in May 25, 1998 when he was only 33 years old. He believes he was the first railway worker to be retrenched. “I was summoned to appear at the clerk’s office where three police officers oversaw a clerk handing me a retrenchment letter. I was told that there was no chance of appeal,” says Kariuki.

He walked home heartbroken, and gathered courage to tell his wife he had been dismissed. They had to leave their spacious house and seek alternative accommodation. As a reward for his work, Kariuki was later cast into the ritual of collecting what he considers peanuts for pension every month at the Railways headquarters.

“Every month on the 25th, all pensioners would queue at the cash office and get paid. My pay was only Sh2,000,” he says.

Unfortunately, the pay came to an abrupt end in 2014 and Kariuki’s attempts to find an explanation were not forthcoming. “Many of us stopped receiving our pension; we became depressed and some of us have since died,” says Kariuki, a father of six.

Despite the blow, he sought employment elsewhere and was hired as an alarm technician at a private firm where he worked for four months.

He says he later took a loan and started a taxi business and other income-generating activities. He now works as an innovator but memories still haunt him. He is bitter that he was retired at 33 and the Standard Gauge Railway is a reminder of how injustices remain unsolved as Kenyans celebrate the infrastructure.

“Every time I see the media praising SGR, I get sad. What about those who suffered in the old railway system? Why not talk about it?” he poses.