The more than 1,800 workers sacked last week by the Nandi county government have moved to court seeking to overturn the decision.
The County Public Service Board terminated their appointments following a human resource audit report which revealed they had been hired irregularly.
Justice Maurine Onyango of the Employment and Labour Relations court in Eldoret has issued orders of a status quo in the county following the case filed by over 400 of the affected employees on behalf of others.
The workers filed the case under a certificate of urgency through a team of lawyers led by Kipkorir Muten.
Muten in supporting affidavits filed at the court, argues that the workers were fired irregularly.
“They were not given notices of termination as required and were not given a hearing as required in law particularly as concerns labour matters,” lawyer Muten said.
He said their clients had documentary evidence that they were hired procedurally and can’t thus be fired haphazardly.
The workers have sued the board and the county government.
Justice Onyango has ordered parties in the matters to serve all relevant documents and that the matter be heard on October 16.
This comes as it emerged that DCI officers have so far grilled more than 20 of the workers in connection with the payroll scam that led to illegal hiring of the excess workers.
The hiring caused the county wage bill to increase to over 75 per cent leaving little resources for development.
Governor Stephen Sang blew the whistle on the payroll scam and invited the Public Service Commission which carried out the audit.
It revealed that the number of county workers had increased from 3,200 to over 5,000.
Sang suspended all the payroll staff and referred the matter to the DCI for investigations.
County DCI boss Peter Ochieng said probe was going on but declined to give father details on phone.
“I cannot discus those matters on phone please,” he said.
The county has lost more than Sh2 billion in the payroll scam, governor Sang has however vowed to implement recommendations of the audit report fully.
“We will implement the report fully so that we sort out the wage bill problem we have once and for all and free resources for development,” Sang said.
