According to the court papers, Dismas Kungu Kira, who served as an assistant supply chain management officer at KeNHA, was dismissed after liking and commenting on a Facebook post by Kileleshwa Member of County Assembly (MCA) Robert Alai.
The post alleged corruption within the roads authority. Kungu was reportedly the first person to comment on the post and went further to tag some of his colleagues, actions that drew the attention of KeNHA’s management.
Following the incident, Kungu was suspended and later dismissed from his position, ending his long service at the authority.
He subsequently moved to the Employment and Labour Relations Court, arguing that the disciplinary action taken against him was unjustified and disproportionate.
Before the court, Kungu maintained that the social media incident was merely a pretext to punish him for whistleblowing.
He argued that an employer must distinguish between trivial misconduct and serious wrongdoing that warrants dismissal.
According to him, reacting to a Facebook post with a thumbs-up emoji could not reasonably be said to compromise KeNHA’s operations, jeopardise national security, or endanger public safety.
“No evidence was ever tendered by the respondent to show that a thumbs-up emoji undermined the authority’s operations,” Kungu told the court. He insisted that, at most, the incident should have attracted a warning rather than termination.
Kungu further revealed that prior to the social media incident, he had written to KeNHA Director General Peter Mundinia and several oversight agencies, alleging tender manipulation, coercion of evaluation committees, use of forged documents by favoured bidders and promises of kickbacks to staff.
He claimed some of his complaints were leaked to bloggers, triggering public debate online. He accused KeNHA of retaliating against him to silence his exposure of alleged graft.
However, KeNHA defended its decision, arguing that Kungu had breached provisions of its Human Resource Manual and Social Media Policy.
The authority also contended that the case had been wrongly framed as a constitutional petition instead of a standard employment dispute.
In her ruling, Employment and Labour Relations Court Judge Justice Jemimah Wanza dismissed Kungu’s case.
She found that KeNHA followed due process and that the termination was both lawful and procedurally fair, effectively upholding the authority’s decision to sack the officer.
