Wrangles in the Nairobi county assembly are far from over after the newly constituted Public Service Board suspended clerk Jacob Ngwele on Thursday.
But Ngwele rushed to court and obtained orders restraining the board from removing him from office.
The board, chaired by Speaker Beatrice Elachi, sent Ngwele on one–month compulsory leave to give way to investigations into allegations of an attempt to sabotage assembly operations.
Elachi made the announcement in her office on Thursday after chairing the board meeting.
She said the board would probe allegations that the clerk asked members of staff not to report to work, contrary to her communication.
She said the clerk refused to attend board meetings despite being duly informed and "had misrepresented the board and the county assembly on various occasions".
“Throughout the duration of the compulsory leave, the clerk is restrained from visiting the assembly precincts until he is scheduled to return to work or otherwise notified. If termination is found to be warranted according to the results of the investigations, he will be notified,” Elachi said.
But Employment and Labour Relations judge Onesmus Makau restrained Elachi and the board from suspending or terminating Ngwele.
Makau, who certified the matter as urgent, also barred the speaker from suspending county staff Abdi Guyo, Okumu Elias, Adah Onyango, Philomena Kavinya, Fredrick Macharia, Nancy Cherono and Garvin Romeo Castro pending hearing and determination of their suit.
“A conservatory order retraining the speaker from illegally or irregularly reconstituting the membership of the assembly service board whether at the behest of the governor, ODM party, Jubilee or any other person or authority pending the determination of the suit,” the judge ordered.
The court also gave an order suspending the operation and implementation of changes in the membership of the service board as published by the speaker in a gazette notice dated October 22 pending the hearing of the application on November 11.
In the suit, Ngwele claims Elachi has been aggressively pursuing a long-running malicious scheme of instigating his "unlawful and unfair suspension, termination and removal and other senior officers of the county assembly".
He also alleges that the speaker has instigated the irregular removal of the bona fide representatives of the Majority and Minority parties in the membership board.
“The speaker's obsessive behaviour of incessantly fighting, undermining, intimidating and pushing for the unlawful and unfair suspension or removal of staff of the assembly from various offices has created panic, confusion and despondency of the assembly since August 2018,” he says in court documents.
The petitioner adds that the operations of the assembly have "ground to a complete halt due to the speaker’s obsessive behaviour of picking incessant fights".
Edited by R.Wamochie
