More than 200 casual workers in Kisumu county have vowed not to resume work until they are paid their six-month salary arrears.
The workers who clean the city said the county government has not paid them since April.
The cleaners are paid Sh300 per person daily. They clean markets and streets in Kisumu.
Worker Hellen Juma said they are suffering as they are unable to feed their families and pay rent.
“We are languishing in poverty. Our children are soon going back to school and we don't know where we will get fees,” she said.
Juma, a cleaner at Jubilee market, told Governor Anyang' Nyong’o to swiftly intervene and have them paid.
“We trusted Nyong’o with leadership and voted for him with love. Why should we be mistreated by his administration? All we want is our money,” she said.
Some of the workers, Juma said, who are widows have been locked out of their houses over non-payment of rent.
“We are also forced to pick rejected vegetables in markets just for our children to get something to eat. We trek to work daily,” she said.
Juma said efforts to get an audience with Nyong’o have not be successful because they are blocked from accessing his office.
“We have heard the county administration claiming that salaries for April, May, and June apart from July, August had been released yet we have not received the money.”
Juma questioned the whereabouts of the money the executive claimed to have been released for their payments. “We are helpless," she said.
She asked city manager Doris Ombara to come clean on their salary stand-off. Ombara did not pick up calls by the Star nor reply text messages to respond to the allegations.
Mildred Akinyi, a cleaner, said they have been working as casuals for the last two years without being absorbed as permanent employees. She said Nyong’o should pay them their salaries.
Another cleaner, Lilian Ogilo, said workers have been in a cat-and-mouse game with the county government over their payments.
She said that they have on numerous occasion threatened to be sacked when they demanded payments.
“It is our good work that has made Nyong’o’s administration ranked one of the best performing counties yet we’ve been ignored and mistreated,” Ogilo said.
At one point, she said, that they have been warned against going to the media to air their plights.
Recently, when the workers stormed county assembly over their payments, Speaker Onyango Oloo said he was only aware of the July and August salary delays due to Sh10.2 billion budget stand-off.
Embattled county finance executive Nerry Achar said cleaners are under city management board.“I am not aware of their salary delays,” he told the Star on the phone yesterday.
