The High Court has been urged to find Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Betty Maina in contempt for disobeying an order.
Also sought is an order to commit her to a six-month jail term or compel her to pay a Sh500,000 fine for terminating the services of Bernard Ngore, an engineer, in defiance of the court.
Ngore was appointed as the chairperson of the National Standards Council of the Kenya Bureau of Standards, but his services were terminated on December 9, 2020.
He says every activity the board has undertaken in his absence is illegal because it was done contrary to a court order.
"The National Standards Council cannot perform its core duties of setting standards in the country, approving the annual budget of the Bureau and performing its functions under sections 7 and 8 of the Standards Act. Any meeting or resolution arrived at without a legally and properly constituted NSC is invalid," Ngore says in suit papers.
The Employment Court had issued an order on December 3, 2020, stopping the state from unlawfully terminating Ngore's services.
According to suit papers, he served the order on the state agents. And immediately after being served with the order, he says, Maina and PS Francis Owino embarked on a sustained witch hunt, intimidation and overt breaches of the order.
On December 9, the two wrote a letter making reference to the court order in question and used that as the basis for stopping him from discharging his duties as chairperson, he says.
"The effect of the alleged contemnor letter dated December 9, 2020, is to circumvent the court order of December 3, 2020, by stopping me from performing my functions under the law," Ngore says.
He wants the case to be certified as urgent.
"The contemnors are in a deliberate path to frustrate the court orders, yet they have neither appealed nor applied to stay the same. The order sought is extremely urgent to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice."
The CS is said to have sent a letter through PS Owino to Kebs indicating the need to have board meetings. And when the board meeting was called on January 1 and held on January 14, she and the PS requested email addresses for all other directors to send them virtual links but excluded Ngore.
