EMPLOYMENT LAW - REPRIEVE FOR JOB SEEKERS AS THE PRESIDENT ASSENTS THE EMPLOYMENT (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2019 INTO LAW

Job seekers in Kenya have received a huge reprieve in their course of job hunting as the process has now been made easier. This is after the president signed into law the Employment Amendment Bill, 2019 on 4th April, 2022.

The Amendment provides that job seekers will no longer require Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI), Higher Education Loans Board (HELB), Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) and Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) clearance certificates at the primary stages of the recruitment process unless such employer intends to extend an offer of employment.

Prior to the Amendment, job seekers would incur high costs in obtaining the clearance and compliance certificates and if they failed to provide the required certificates, they wouldn’t be shortlisted for the roles. These costs posed a major challenge to job seekers seeing that most of them are persons below the age of 35 years and first-time employees with no income or resources. 

To solve these issues, the Amendment mandates employers to carry out background checks on prospective employees at the secondary stages of recruitment such as upon granting an offer of employment.

Additionally, it has been recommended that the application and processing of compliance or clearance certificates by the relevant entities be automated to facilitate the acquisition of such documents and reduce attendant costs of manual processing of such documents.

This will ensure that potential employees do not fail to make the shortlist simply because they lack the funds to get the costly clearance certificates, but at the same time ensuring that the constitutional principles of leadership and integrity as set out in Chapter Six of the Constitution, 2010 are upheld once a candidate is offered a position. 

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