Job seekers in Kenya can now sigh with relief after Members of the National Assembly passed a bill against requirements that all applicants must provide clearance certificates when looking for employment.
In a statement shared on Wednesday, November 10, Nominated MP Gideon Keter, who sponsored the bill, noted that MPs passed the bill without any objections.
He further explained that only individuals that are offered jobs will be required to carry out background checks on themselves.
"Earlier today, Members of Parliament unanimously supported the Employment Amendment Bill without any objections as the debate concluded. Previously as you may recall, before the introduction of this amendment, job seekers were tasked with the responsibility of running background checks on themselves so as to secure a mere job interview."
"However, now a cure has come through this amendment whereby an employer shall no longer perceive job seekers as a wrongdoer before they apply for a job. The solution to all these bottlenecks is that an employer will no longer ask job seekers for such documents until or unless an offer of employment is guaranteed," he stated.
He further decried the malignation of graduates by heaping on them the burden of seeking clearance certificates.
To prove his case, Keter noted that some states in the U.S mandated employers to shoulder the burden of verifying their new recruits' histories.
"Job seeking should not be an adventure where job seekers must prove that they are not a wrongdoer or haven’t engaged in any crime in the past."
"These are young men and women who are more than ready to offer their skills and knowledge for the advancement of this nation’s greatness," he added.
Previously, job applicants were required to get clearance certificates that would cost them as much as Ksh6,000 in a tedious and time-consuming exercise.
The certificates include that of good conduct gotten from the DCI, another from the Ethics and Corruption Commission (EACC), one from Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), another from Higher Loans Board (HELB) and a Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) clearance.
For the good conduct certificate, applicants are expected to part with Ksh1,050 while CRB also attracts a fee. Other certificates are largely provided for free but applicants often incur service costs of varying degrees.
According to an investigation carried out by the Parliamentary Budget Office indicated that the state makes Ksh750 million from job seekers every year but none of the funds trickle down to the youth kitty.
"Public-funded institutions should never be cash cows. From the research done by the Parliamentary Budget Office, these institutions have been collecting over Sh750 million every year from job seekers."
"This is a clear indication that they have been milking job seekers, most of them graduates, for years yet there is not a single cent that has been directly sent back to youth-empowerment programmes. There is nothing to show that these monies have been sent to HELB to boost its kitty, for instance," added the notice.
Millions of Kenyans are still unemployed with the situation worsened by a hard-hit economy.
