The Dock Workers Union has defended the Kenya Ports Authority managing director William Ruto over recent audit queries raised by the Office of the Auditor General.
Ruto, who was confirmed as KPA boss in March this year, was this week grilled by the National Assembly Public Investment Committee on Commercial Affairs and Energy over KPA’s financial books for 2019-20 financial year.
The Auditor General's report said Sh242 million could have been lost in container storage waiver.
The waivers were granted on condition that the cargo would be cleared within seven days, failure to which the storage fees would be secured in full.
However, the cargo that had not been cleared within the seven days accumulated storage fees of Sh242,268,925, which were not secured by the KPA management.
Further, the audit report said a storage waiver amounting to Sh24,885,400 was granted to customers on grounds of financial challenges and KPA failed to provide supporting documents or explanations on how the amount was computed.
Dock Workers Union secretary general Simon Sang said the issues being raised by the Auditor General did not happen during Ruto's tenure.
“Captain Ruto came to the officer just the other day, these issues being raised have nothing to do with him. He has really tried to implement a number of new policies that are meant to streamline operations at the Port of Mombasa,” Sang said.
One of the new directives introduced by Ruto in June was the announcement of the suspension of payments through credit accounts beginning July 1, 2023.
KPA management also started investigating an alleged syndicate of manipulating accounts.
Captain Ruto said rendering of services will only be through bank cheques and other bank payment systems including real-time gross settlement (RTGS).
Some of the customers’ accounts that had unpaid debt were operating above bank guarantee limits, while some had their invoices aged over 30 days.
This was against the KPA’s credit policy which stipulates that invoices should settle within six days from the date of issuance, according to Ruto.
In the Auditor General’s report, KPA management is also accused of paying millions of shillings to its employees as overtime and for hours not worked.
In the report, KPA paid Sh7,473,722,000 for basic salaries and Sh2,441,884,000 paid as overtime allowances to the operations and administrative employees.
The report says KPA could have lost millions of shillings for approved payment for hours not worked as staff received more than the required salaries.
KPA Human Resource Manual of 2017 requires overtime hours payable at the applicable rates to be limited to a maximum of 30 per cent of the normal monthly working hours for operational employees and 20 per cent for administrative and non-operational employees.
In the period under review, KPA paid Sh879 million in respect of overtime allowances approved and paid in excess of 30 per cent and 20 per cent for operations and administrative employees respectively
KPA also paid Sh384 million in respect to the third-shift allowances at a rate of 3 per cent of the basic pay for the everyday work, contrary to 15 per cent of the basic monthly salary as required.
However, the Dock Workers Union on Friday defended Captain Ruto of any wrongdoing, saying KPA management acted within the law.
According to Sang, KPA was in 2020 forced to set high targets for its employees due to a government directive that all cargo must be transferred to Nairobi via the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) freight services.
He said during that time, the KPA operations department was understaffed, therefore the employees were forced to work overtime in order to beat the government’s target.
"The management was then forced to be innovative and since there was no incentive scheme to sustain the performance demand, they had to use overtime as a motivation since it was the only tool within their disposal,” Sang said.
He added, “They did so by agreement with the employees that for any surpassed haulage of containers, the employees were paid double shift, translating to more paid money, which doubled the salaries of the employees.”
He said due to staff shortages and circumstances that prevailed the employees ended up working for more than 600 hours per month.