The court's decision was made shortly after outgoing Town Clerk Philip Kisia handed over the office to Duba/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 4 – The High Court has now suspended the appointment of Roba Duba as new Town Clerk for Nairobi, following an application by a city resident.
The court further directed Local Government Permanent Secretary Karega Mutahi to subject the position to a rigorous recruitment procedure.
Patrick Njuguna filed the case complaining that the recruitment was done illegally since the position was never advertised for public participation.
The court’s decision was made shortly after outgoing Town Clerk Philip Kisia handed over the office to Duba.
During the handover, he insisted that the recent questionable ISO certification was proper.
“The firm that certified the council is fully recognised. It is actually accredited and all the relevant documents are ready for scrutiny and anyone having doubts should ask for them,” he said. “You know this is a very big process and you cannot just go to any Tom, Dick and Harry.”
He pointed out that it was now up to the incoming Town Clerk to implement the recommendations contained in the report.
“You cannot implement a report in two weeks. What we have done is to read the report, the recommendations are there and some of them require enormous resources,” he said.
He maintained that there have been tremendous reforms within the council since he took over office three years ago.
“If you recall, when I took over office I said I will follow the pathway of reforms because if you look at the advertisement for the Town Clerk job was very specific. It said that the job required a transformation leader, someone who can reform the council from within. That is where we started – by reforming this institution from within.”
Kisia further stated that he is now set to launch his quest for the Nairobi Governor’s position.
He said that working at City Hall was a launch pad towards achieving his ambition.
“The people of Nairobi have asked me to vie for that office, so who am I to refuse?” he posed.
He described his work at the council as fulfilling as he was able to achieve many of his goals.
“The planning department for example has moved from being the worst in Africa to the best in Sub-Saharan Africa,” he observed.
He further described the lighting up of informal settlements in Nairobi as one of the defining moments in his career at City Hall.
“The city and especially the informal settlements were lit at a level of 30 percent and as I leave office, we have been to light up the settlements to a tune of 90 percent,” he said.
He cited the reduction of the time used to get single business permits as another achievement by the council.
“The fact that we can issue a single business license in a matter of a day as opposed to seven days. I think that is what people look at. The fact that we can now approve building plans within less than thirty days, that has an effect on the economy,” he said.
Questions had been raised over the awarding of ISO certification to City Hall for introducing e-payments, adopting ICT, purging graft and cutting ghost workers.
This week, the Kenya Accreditation Service (KENAS) said it had launched investigations to ascertain how the City Council of Nairobi was awarded the certification.
Managing Director Sammy Milgo said on Wednesday that the certification is a key performance indicator and it is expected that those accredited have a high level of quality of service and client satisfaction.
The Kenya Accreditation Service is a State corporation established in 2009 and is responsible for certifying organisations that carry out accreditation.
“The standard is actually the benchmark and that’s why we are liaising with the certifier so that we are able to get more details and then we should be able to get back to you and the public at large because when you are accredited you must demonstrate competence,” Milgo told journalists.
The Kenya Alliance of Residents Associations Chief Executive Officer Stephen Mutoro termed it as a ‘mockery’ of the process as it came on the heels of a damning report by an audit firm that revealed that a large percentage of the workforce was incompetent.
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