Radio Africa, a media house that hosts Classic 105, Kiss FM, The Star and Kiss TV, on Friday, April 3, announced that it would slash salaries for all their employees.
In a statement signed by the Group CEO, Patrick Quarcoo, he stated that the employees would have to get their salaries slashed following the effect of Covid-19 on the country.
"We managed to pay March salaries on time but our business is already seeing a major loss of advertising revenue from April that will impact the financial health of the company going forward.
"I held several meetings and consulted extensively with the leadership team to find a solution to keep the business going at this challenging time. In all my discussions and brainstorming sessions with them, I made it clear that redundancies should be our last option and if so only if it is unavoidable," read the statement.
The media house announced that it would have to make a 30% pay cut to employees earning more than Ksh 100,000 and 20% to those who earned below that.
"Effective 1st April 2020, all employees earning a gross salary of more than Kshs. 100,000/ will take a 30% pay cut.
"Effective 1st April 2020, all employees earning a gross salary of less than Kshs 100,000/= will take a 20% pay cut," read the statement in part.
The company assured its employees that the pay cuts would be temporary and would be reversed once the economy returned to normalcy and revenues returned to pre-pandemic levels.
"Our first priority, at this stage of the pandemic is to at least try and find any way to keep the company afloat and save every job we can.
"For Radio Africa this means that each and every one of us has to act in solidarity, for as long as is financially and economically viable, to ensure that none of us loses their jobs and their livelihoods permanently," read the statement.
The statement comes a week after Royal Media Services announced that all employees would be subjected to 20 to 30 per cent reduction of their gross monthly salary.
According to a GeoPoll report conducted between March 1, 2020 to March 29, 2020, average television viewership increased 335,000 viewers, from 6.76 million to 7.09 million, after GoK issued country-wide COVID-19 preventative measures.
However, average radio listenership in Kenya fell from the first half of March to the latter half of March.
The available radio audience in the first 2 weeks of March 2020 was 10.79 million listeners.
It, however, dropped down 66,000 listeners to 10.72 million on from 16th – 29th March.
