A former employee of a  Pan-African Talent Agency-Gebeya Limited has sued the company for unfair dismissal and xenophobic attacks against her  by the CEO of the said company.

Rachel Mumbe Nyamai  who was the Director of Sales and Business Development claims that the company terminated her employment in the most humiliating ,xenophobic and discriminative manner last year.

She is seeking sh10 million as general damages saying her termination was effected in a most callous way, violating her constitutional right to fair labour practices, including, but not limited to her freedom from discrimination and her freedom from inhumane and degrading treatment.

The former employee explains that in the year 2020 , the company approached her to collaborate with them as a consultant to establish a marketing department which she did.

Thereafter she was offered employment in the position of Director of Sales and Business Development where she dutifully and satisfactory performed her duties in accordance with the employment contract.

However, she claims despite her diligence and achieving rapid increase in product sales and significantly improving the company’s annual revenue, the company CEO allegedly undermined and frustrated her service thereby creating unreasonable working conditions.

“The respondent displayed a persistent pattern of undermining my contribution and encouraged the use of derogatory language and insults by himself and the Chief Operating Officer who often criticized me and other employees’ accent and made embarrassing comments on people’s body sizes,” she said in court documents.

It is her case that the said CEO had discriminative tendencies, openly displaying his preference for Ethiopian nationals in key executive leadership positions at the company over Kenyan nationals such as herself.

She says on 5 December 2022, while she was at work, the CEO requested to have a meeting with her over the lunch hour where he informed her that the company had decided to terminate her employment since it  was in the process of hiring a Head of Growth and had since hired a South African national one Martin Ndlovu to the position.

She informed the CEO of her outstanding performance thus there was no justification for her termination and no agreement was made with the company on her termination.

However on 6 December 2022, the Chief Operating Officer wrote an email to the Human Resources Manager purporting that the company and herself had agreed to mutually separate from employment which was untrue.

“Despite not agreeing to the termination, the Respondent pushed me away requiring me to utilize 21 leave days from 12 December 2022 and return to work in January 2023,” she says in court documents.

Nyamai contends that she reported back to work in January 2023 and provided training to the Chief Executive Officer and other departments, and fulfilled her obligations until 31 January 2023 when her access to the company’s offices was restricted.

She contends that the company did not make any formal agreement for her review, and neither did it provide any notice whatsoever.

Aggrieved by her unlawful and unfair termination of employment, she lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Labour the County Labour Officer, Nairobi where her complaint was processed by the office of the County Labour Officer who held meetings with both her and the Company’s representatives.

The County Labour Officer indicated his decision that following conciliation on 6 June 2023, it was recommended that the company should pay her sh 2,320,000 being 1 month’s salary in lieu of notice and 3 months’ salary as compensation for unlawful and unfair termination.

However, the company did not honor the said conciliation necessitating her to move to the Employment and Labour Relations court to seek damages.

The case will be mentioned on March 12.