WPP Scan Group under fire for lopsided employment practices – Kenyan Business Feed

Struggling firm WPP Scangroup is in shaky territory after replacing Kenyan workers with Asians

Dagoretti South Member of National Assembly John Kiarie has put the Cabinet Secretary for Labour Simon Chelugui to task over the matter.

Hon Kiarie asks, the following pertinent questions

1. Could the Cabinet Secretary confirm whether M/s. IPPP Sao:group Company PLC, which is a full-service creative transformation company engaged in marketing, communication, brand stewardship, media investment management and consumer research complies with labour laws and regulations in its operations?
2. Could the Cabinet Secretary explain why the Company has been replacing majority of Kenya’s top creative staff and replacing them with foreign personnel from an Indian-based firm known as Mytie Monks since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic?
3. What measures is the Ministry taking against the leadership of the firm for the injustices against the affected Kenyan personnel?
4. Could the Cabinet Secretary explain why the said publicly listed company has been allowed to fraudulently engage and retain foreigners for decades to undertake work that can effectively be handled by Kenyan professionals, while at the same time placing its local staff under strenuous and inhumane working conditions including working overnight without compensation?

The response is to be received before the Departmental Committee of Labour and Social Welfare.

Scan Group was in the news, early this year, for mismanagement and sexual scandals that saw its founder Bharat Thakrar resign from the firm.

Rampant

The behaviour of replacing Kenyans with Asians to European expats is not new.

Kenyan Business Feed has documented this before.

A Kenyan based international development firm, TripleLine (formerly IPE Global (Africa) Limited) sacked all Kenyan staff, replacing them with Europeans and Indians.

For 500 years, capital has relied on the devaluation of lives in the global South, whether it be through colonisation, dispossession, genocide and slavery, or, more recently, through structural adjustment programmes, free trade agreements and corporate land grabs that depress the costs of Southern labour and resources. The $1.90 line is the legacy of this long history. It is part of a colonial ideology that sees people of colour as cheap.

Jason Hickel, Lecturer

---

Kenyan Business Feed is the top Kenyan Business Blog. We share news from Kenya and across the region. To contact us with any alert, please email us to [email protected]

---

Comments