Sacked Kenya-Re Managing Director Mwarania reinstated

Sacked Kenya Re Managing Director Mr. Jadiah Mwarania (R) serves Internal Auditor, Peter Rop (L) in the Supply Chain Manager’s office during the Customer Service Week. [Standard]

Sacked Kenya Reinsurance Corporation Limited Managing Director Jadiah Mwarania has been reinstated.

Employment and Labour Relations Judge Byram Ongaya ruled that Mr Mwarania was unfairly sacked by the state corporation in March and ordered that he be reinstated immediately.

“The termination of Mr Mwarania’s contract of employment was unfair, unjustified, illegal, null and void. The court reinstates him to his former capacity as the managing director without any loss of benefits, the corporation must immediately allow him to resume duties,” said Ongaya.

The judge further restrained Kenya-Re board of directors from interfring or sabotaging Mr Mwarania once he resumes duties.  He also ordered that the MD be paid the accumulated salaries for the time he was out of employment.

Mwarania had claimed that prior to his sacking, the board had been serving him with “unwarranted” letters touching on his alleged shortcomings which he adequately responded to.

He argued that he was surprised to be served with the termination letter without being given opportunity to defend himself.

 “I was summoned to the boardroom at around 8.00am where I was informed of my dismissal and handed over a letter of termination without any notice, hearing or justification,” he said.

He had sworn that his problems started with the confidential letter that he received from the Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua in June last year directing him to put in place measures to ensure some board members were replaced during the company’s 19th Annual General Meeting.

Those to be replaced were Chair David Kimei and members Maina Mukoma and Chiboli Shakaba. They were to be replaced by Michael Monari, Hilda Muchuku and Julius Koros respectively.

“I strongly believe that my compliance with the directive of the Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service was the genesis of the perceived issues with some of the board members particularly, those who were supposed to retire in the aforesaid AGM,” he said.

He argued that it was after getting the directive that Mr Kimei sent him a memo under the reference “perennial lapses in the management of the corporation”, raising alleged deficiencies on Kenya-Re’s balance scorecard which he blamed on the CEO.

The board in October 2017 moved to contract the services of audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to undertake an audit of the firm’s business processes which was submitted on February 7, this year.

The report, according to Mr Mwarania, was critical of his business leadership and which led to the unfair termination of his five-year term.