Just a day after Mediamax Network Limited sent home it’s entire K24 TV newsroom staff, the Royal Media Services (RMS) has started issuing redundancy letters to some of its journalists and presenters.
More than 5 highly-placed sources at the broadcaster told Kenyans.co.ke that the media house started by laying off employees in the radio departments.
Some of the employees who have allegedly been sent home include; Hot 96 FM Presenter Nancy Wanjiku Karanja known to many as Shix Kapienga, Radio Citizen presenters Syombua Osiany, John Maloba, Himenigilder Mugeni and others.
Kapienga hosted Drop Zone on Hot 96 FM each Monday to Thursday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. while Syombua hosted Pambazuka on Radio Citizen from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Kenyans.co.ke has learnt that employees in other departments will learn of their fate in the course of the week, with early reports indicating that two TV presenters are already facing the sack.
In February 2020, there were rumours that the media house would lay off some of its employees, citing hard economic times.
However, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country in March, the media house announced a general salary reduction for all its staff.
RMS stated that it's workers would be subjected to a compulsory pay cut of between 20% and 30%.
“The unprecedented outbreak of the coronavirus in the world and Kenya, in particular, has had serious repercussions on businesses, including ours.
"This reality necessitates that we take difficult but necessary measures to see us through this period, one of which is to scale down our operations until the situation normalizes," Royal Media Services MD Wachira Waruru stated in the memo dated March 27, 2020.
On Sunday, June 21, over 100 Mediamax employees were notified of their redundancies, with most of the departments being swept clean.
Journalists from Switch TV and TV 47 have since been contracted to replace the staff.
The journalists at the media house have made headlines since April after they sued the company.
They argued that they were not consulted before the firm came up with the compulsory 50% pay cut.
Their layoffs came less than a year after the company sacked 160 employees in October 2019.
