A suspended Kenya Airways employee on Thursday resumed duty after JKIA cancelled his suspension.Ali Gire’s reinstatement follows a court order on Monday.Presiding Judge Weldon Korir, ruled that Gire should resume work with immediate effect.
In the ruling Justice Korir also ordered Kenya Airways to reinstate him.He had gone to court to challenge his suspension after he shared a video showing a China Southern plane with 239 passengers landing at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on Friday, February 28, 2020 amid coronavirus concerns.In his suspension letter dated February 27, Gire, a security agent at the JKIA, was told that he had breached the staff’s conduct guidelines.
“It has been determined that you be suspended from duty with effect from 27th February 2020 in accordance with provisions of clause 16.5 of the Company HR Policy Manual,” part of the letter signed by KQ Chief Human Resources Officer, Evelyne Munyoki, read.“My client did nothing wrong by filming the plane landing,” Dunstan Omari, Gire’s lawyer argued.
Police have, however, now said that he will not be charged.Meanwhile, Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia on Wednesday claimed that Ali, was a criminal.During a joint Health Committee with the National Assembly and the Senate, Macharia said that Ali should be jailed for breaching airport security.He also argued that Gire deserved to be suspended as his action of filming the airport “exposed the facility to security threat”.“The said whistle-blower, first of all is not one. You do not blow on a 787 (Airbus) arriving at 7 in the morning. That flight (China Southern Airlines) was not arriving in secret, he committed illegality as that is a security breach,” he said.
According to the CS, JKIA is a security installation and no one is allowed to film secretly.“You can’t take a video at the airport. He is not a whistle-blower and the law should be applied as is required.”Members of the joint Health Committees of the Senate and National Assembly however, took on the CS after he defended the national carrier over its decision to suspend Ali.The committee was of the view that Ali’s act had saved the country from a possible coronavirus infection urging the State to honour him instead.But the CS would hear none of it.
“This was a 737 Airbus that arrived in the country in broad daylight, at 7 am. Its arrival was not a secret because many passengers and workers saw it land and it would have been reported anyway,” he said.The CS refused to dig into the circumstances under which the plane was allowed to land in the country, instead he told the committee to focus on enhancing measures towards ensuring proper controls and surveillance of the deadly virus.?
