BY LOLA OKULO

STAFF at supermarket chain Tuskys are planning a second countrywide strike after the management reportedly sacked over 100 employees citing “re-dundancy,” a union of!cial has told the Star.

The employees’ spokesperson Samson Omechi accused the Tuskys management of spoiling for a !ght by sacking over 113 workers citing redundancy, at a time when the company is open-ing new stores.

Omechi who is the chairman of Tuskys central staff commit-tee whose workers are repre-sented by the Kenya Union of Commercial, Food, and Allied Workers said the company had also signed a deal with Shell in which more stores will be opened at the oil marketers’ select outlets hence the job cuts were a “witch hunt.”

“They informed the union of

their plans to lay off 113 em-ployees but from the sacking letters people started receiving as from February 20, they have laid off more than the number they had said,” Omechi said.

“Its not realistic that they are !ring workers when they are ex-panding the business. It is simply !ghting back and victimisation of staff because of the earlier strike where we demanded for our fair dues.”

In December, Tuskys employ-ees staged a one day strike that led to the company losing over Sh300 million in sales revenue after paralysing operations in all of the company’s stores.

The move led to swift action by the management to end the strike by signing the !rst ever collective bargaining agreement with Kucfaw which spelt out better remuneration and em-ployment terms.

“We cannot sit back and watch as the management tries

to silence the voice of the work-ers...we must !ght back and we are going to react very soon,” warned Omechi.

The Star’s efforts to reach Tusky’s general manager Peter Mbatia for comment were not successful.

Under the CBA agreement the over 6,000 unionisable employ-ees had their pay increased and were entitled to at least one paid off day per week from an ear-lier rule of only two per month, 23 leave days per year from 21, overtime pay of one and a half times the normal houraly rate, house allowance and paid sick leave among other bene!ts.

Tuskys has over 50 outlets across the country and recently opened its !rst of many to be located within Shell service sta-tions, at Haile Selassie avenue in Nairobi.

It also took over the opera-tions of some Ukwala Super-market outlets in Nairobi.

38 LOCAL THE STAR Monday, February 24, 2014

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Tuskys locks horns with its workers again

Can YOU outsmart the expert?

ALY KHAN’S STAR

PORTFOLIO

Last week I visited Geneva via Dubai. As I sat and lis-tened to the destinations, I appreciated how Dubai has made itself an intersection

point in this 21st century world. Absolutely any and every destina-tion in the World was seemingly called as I waited for mine. I, once, characterised Kenya as a transit state but in fact Dubai is the real transit state, a connection point in an interconnected century. I have seen thirty year old photographs of Dubai and it was a blank canvas.

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future,” Victor Hugo said.

And indeed when you look at what Sheikh Mohamed has achieved its truly miraculous. Brand Dubai is one we need to learn from. We too are a transit state. Of course, it would be mad-ness to take a tilt at Dubai but we can carve-out a similar position in East Africa. We are the route to the sea for a vast swathe of coun-tries from the eastern DRC to Juba. This is the tailwind we need to ensure fills our sails. And for this to happen, our airport, ports, our roads and our railways need to be first class. And all of this needs to be plugged into cheap power. And we need to do this now. And frankly, given the struc-ture of our expenditure (recurrent, that is, salaries and allowances), it is clear we simply have not yet created enough fiscal space to do this.

T.S Eliot says in The Hollow Men‘’Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the shadow’’And we are in that place be-

tween the idea and the reality and for the idea to become the reality we are going to need to make

some hard decisions.I had been to Geneva many

years ago with my family. And I was staying in the Four Seasons this time on Lake Geneva and frankly its a pleasure to enter the Rolls Royce [I did not say Maserati because the Swiss do not care to move at that kind of speed] world that is the Four Seasons and Ge-neva. You feel the prosperity every which way you turn in Geneva. Switzerland’s status as a banking hub and centre of excellence has been built over many years. The dividend from being a banking hub just keeps on paying. We too have a sophisticated banking sector with lashings of innovation. There is no reason we cannot carve out a similar position in this part of Africa.

I read a recent report where the authors characterised a key trait of 21st century success as being a quality termed ‘’Global Fluency.’’

Global fluency is the level of

global un-derstanding, competence, practice, and reach a metropolitan area exhibits in an increasingly inter-connected world economy.

Both Dubai and Geneva are ‘’glo-bally fluent.’’ Due to unique circum-stances post the 2007 election, our narrative became truculent and extremely aggressive. This narrative is past its sell-by date. It was certainly effective well up to a point. It serves no purpose now. Its not fluent.

Shares go up and down and readers are advised that this column represents Mr Satchu’s personal opinions.

KENYA CAN BE A MAJOR TRANSIT POINT LIKE DUBAI

STANDOFF: Tusky’s Enkarasha branch along Kenyatta Avenue was among those closed during the workers countrywide strike on December 19 last year.

KCB gets CMA nod for investment bankingBY STAR REPORTER

KENYA Commercial Bank Group will embark on invest-ment advisory business after getting approval from the Capital Markets Authority to operate an investment bank.

CMA said it has issued a licence to the bank to open a subsidiary called KCB Capital Ltd which will be the company’s investment bank-

ing arm.KCB Capital will offer ad-

visory services on securities, take-overs, mergers, acquisi-tions, corporate restructuring involving companies listed or quoted on a securities exchange, privatisation of companies through a securi-ties exchange or underwrit-ing of securities issued or to be issued to the public.

Through its new business,

KCB will also be able to offer stock brokerage or dealer services to clients.

KCB Capital is the 11th investment advisory !rm to be licenced by the CMA.

The banking group enters the market at a time the stock market is enjoying a bullish moment attracting a lot of interest from interna-tional investors as well as local ones.

REAL TRANSIT: Dubai is the real transit state, a con-nection point in an interconnected century.