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How house helps were to be made managers in jobs scam


House helps were promised jobs as managers by an organisation suspected to have duped thousands of Kenyans with lucrative job offers.

In the elaborate scam, job seekers who included house helps and university graduates were asked to apply for  positions that just had six-figure salaries. The positions however had no job description, according to victims of the scam.

Top officials of the organisation have since been arrested by police, allegedly for collecting money from the public by false pretence.

According to NGO Coordination Board chief executive Fazul Mahamed, Sub-Saharan Africa Safe Promotion Foundation-International (SSASP), which attracted thousands to Kasarani Safaricom Stadium with the job offers, was an illegal entity.

ESCAPING JOBLESSNESS

The victims said the organisation had raised their hopes of escaping joblessness, they did not take caution to counter-check the authenticity of the offers.

“I thought this would be the turning point of my life and I was ready to bid goodbye to poverty. After I put in my Form Four certificate and passed the interview, we were sworn in and given an offer letter of Sh150, 000 per month salary,” said 26-year-old Janet Otieno, a house help in Nyalenda slums, Kisumu.

Mr Duncan Owino, a Bachelor of Commerce graduate and a Certified Public Accountant, had been looking for a job for the last four years and saw the organisation as god-send.

“I was to earn Sh150, 000 basic salary per month as a clerk and I was ready to start my work on September 1,” he said.

So hopeful was Mr Owino that he had started looking for a plot he intended to buy with his first six-month savings to build rental houses.

“I got the shock of my life after realising that the organisation was a fraud. I knew I had a job already and I just wanted to expand my chips selling business and do things that a graduate should do with money,” he said.

SURVIVED BY A WHISKER

Ms Macrin Owiti survived the con organisation by a whisker after noticing that things were not adding up.

“Even if it is philanthropy, it is not possible that a single organisation can employ all those people. I suspected that things were not good and I decided to go slow on it,” said Ms Owiti.

Mr Victor Mburu, left his Sh50, 000 a month job at a local NGO for what was to be a Sh400, 000 director position.

“I was convinced that this was what I needed. I was even told that they had partnered with Bishop-run organisations in Kenya and I was convinced. I wish I had known not to leave my job,” he said.

The organisation’s chief executive Julius Kithome on Wednesday however laughed off the claims that they were illegal.

“If we were operating illegally, why then did we have the prisons band during the launch and why were we cleared to host our event in the stadium?” asked Mr Kithome.