• The clerk is the administrative head of the assembly, the secretary to the board and the Principal Advisor on all County Assembly procedures.
• Wrangles between Elachi and Ngwele escalated last year which saw him being hounded out of office.
The Nairobi City County Assembly Service Board has advertised a vacancy in the office of the clerk.
The office has been caught in between supremacy battles between County Assembly Speaker Beatrice Elachi and embattled Clerk Jacob Ngwele for the past nine months.
In the advert issued in the local dailies on Monday, Speaker Elachi who is the chairperson to the board, called on interested parties to apply for the position.
She noted that the assembly has never recruited a Substantive Clerk to the County Assembly since inception in 2013.
“Pursuant to section 18 of the County Assembly Services Act, 2017, the nomination of a person for appointment as a Clerk of the County Assembly under Section 13 of the County Governments Act, 2012, shall be done through an open, transparent and competitive recruitment process,'
"Consequently, the Nairobi City County Assembly Service Board invites applications from suitably qualified Kenyan citizens to fill the following position on permanent and pensionable terms,” read part of the notice.
Elachi stated that the advertisement was in compliance with a court order dated June 4, 2020 by the Employment and Labor Relations Court, Nairobi.
The Clerk is the administrative head of the assembly, the secretary to the board and the Principal Advisor on all County Assembly procedures.
Wrangles between Elachi and Ngwele escalated last year which saw him being hounded out of office.
Despite a court ruling on October 30, 2019, that reinstated Ngwele as the clerk of the assembly, the board went ahead and appointed Monica Muthami as the acting clerk.
What followed was an ad hoc committee that was formed by the assembly last November to look into the issues surrounding the appointment of Ngwele as the clerk established that he was irregularly appointed.
As a result, Ngwele’s name was revoked on the floor of the house as the clerk on the basis that his name was never tabled on the floor of the house for approval after he was seconded to the County assembly from Parliament in 2013.
In a letter dated December 27, 2019, Solicitor General Kennedy Ogeto had written to Speaker Elachi advising on the status of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) of the Assembly.
Ogeto had maintained that as per the court ruling on October 30, 2019, Ngwele had been reinstated as the clerk of the assembly.
He also noted that on November 26, 2019, the Employment and Labor Relation Court suspended the appointment of Monica Muthami and or any other persons as an acting clerk.
“A letter dated December 18, 2019, addressed to the National Treasury with a copy to you, we advised that Mr Ngwele is the de jure clerk to the County Assembly, on the basis of the consent recorded in the Employment and Labour Relations Court Petition No. 194 of 2019 on October 30, 2019,” reads the letter.