NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept 30 – Safaricom has reported a 75 per cent rise in the number of staff dismissed over fraud following the dismissal of 28 staff over such offences in the year ending March.
According to the 10th Sustainable Business Report, the firm also issued 19 warnings to its employees similarly to last year when an additional 16 staff were dismissed.
The publication themed ‘Standing Together: Going Beyond’ added that the increase in the number of fraud cases done by employees resulted in a decrease in the economic value generated by the firm.
“Each year, a portion of the economic value generated by Safaricom is lost as a result of corruption that takes place in the Kenyan economy,” the report noted.
The increase in the number of cases was attributed to a lack of proper face-to-face ethical training sessions due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“The significant drop in agent training is attributable to the fact that training sessions in FY21 were zoom sessions that only covered agent principals and did not include agent assistants as in previous years,” the report noted.
In order to combat the fraud, the telco noted that it established fraud management squads that specialized in analytics, customer awareness, and process reviews that drive customer safety through continuous customer fraud awareness.
“The squads have completed three key initiatives, targeting irregular subscriber registration, focused awareness to customers and review of the processes followed by SIM selling outlets,” the firm added.
At the same time, the report revealed that the number of persons living with disabilities working at the firm accounts for 2.2 percent of all staff, signifying a 5.6 percent reduction.
The gender threshold at the firm stands at 50 percent with 34 percent of women holding senior positions, a one percent decrease from 2020.
Overall the company noted that it sustained 1,003,669 jobs despite the economic impact and created a total value of Shs 664 billion for the Kenyan society in its last financial year.
It also contributed Shs 557.1 billion to the economy, amounting to 5.2 percent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
