The case stemmed from a chaotic rollout of a flawed electronic subscriber registration system involving over 90,000 Huawei Y311 devices. Despite multiple warnings from the ASM team about serious operational issues during the pilot phase, Safaricom ignored their concerns and proceeded with a nationwide rollout. When the project inevitably failed, the company turned around and made the ASMs scapegoats.
In what can only be described as corporate betrayal, the employees were summoned to Safaricom’s headquarters in May 2018 and allegedly coerced into recording statements by the Risk Division. A month later, they were unceremoniously dismissed, without formal charges, without due process, and a shred of accountability from the company’s top brass.
“All 39 ASMs were terminated on the same day. Only five were reinstated, while the rest were left in the cold,” court records reveal. The court, however, found no discrimination in the selective reinstatements, just a cold, calculated indifference to justice.
The judge ruled that the failures of the project were not due to employee negligence, as Safaricom had claimed, but rather due to systemic deficiencies in the company’s own processes, policies, and decision-making. Testimony showed that some of the devices had even been found on competitor networks—an indictment not of the sales managers, but of a company that had lost control of its own operations.
While Safaricom claimed it suffered financial losses amounting to KSh 544.5 million, the court flatly rejected the assertion that the ASMs were to blame. Instead, the blame now rests squarely on the shoulders of Safaricom’s leadership.
The court awarded each of the 17 claimants the equivalent of ten months’ gross salary plus one month’s pay in lieu of notice. Some employees will receive more than KSh 4.2 million in compensation. Additionally, Safaricom must pay interest on the amounts from the date of judgment and foot the full cost of the suit.
This ruling sends a clear message to powerful corporations: you cannot silence dissenting voices, trample on workers’ rights, and walk away unscathed.
With a reputation once polished by its dominance in the telecommunications industry, Safaricom now faces serious questions about its internal governance, ethics, and how it treats its most loyal employees.
Justice Mathews Nduma delivered a powerful closing remark that should ring loudly across Kenya’s corporate boardrooms:
“The claimants were wrongly accused of negligence when failures of the project were as a result of deficiencies in the operational procedures, policies, and systems of the project.”
Safaricom may have thought it could bury the scandal quietly. But now, the truth is out, and the public is watching.
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