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12 years on, Siaya family still seeking deceased mother’s benefits from City Hall


A family in Gem, Siaya County, is desperate to receive benefits of their deceased mother, a staff at the defunct Nairobi City Council who passed on in 2005.

The deceased, Ms Leah Adhiambo, worked as a cleaner and later joined City Hall choir in 1980. However, 12 years after her death her family is yet to receive benefits following frustration by the county government.

Stephen Oyoo, her son, has been following the payments at City Hall since she passed away, but his efforts have only yielded frustration.

Mr Oyoo told Nation how when her mother passed away, he was given a small “send off” package by her mother’s employer with some of mother’s colleagues attending the burial.

‘MISSING FILE’

However, in 2006 when he started following up the matter, he was informed that his mother’s file was missing.

“After my mother’s burial we started the process of getting the benefits from City Hall. The person I found at the payroll office told me he could not trace the file claiming that maybe she was a ghost worker,” said Mr Oyoo.

Mr Oyoo would later make several trips to City Hall with payslips from 1980 to 2005 to prove that her mother worked there but he was repeatedly turned away since her file no.MD.463099 was missing.

In 2014, he met a man at the payroll office, who was not a county employee, who offered to assist him to trace the missing file at a fee.

He said that he paid the man Sh 7,000 and the man would later resurface only to inform him that he had to fill some documents so that her mother’s compensation on soap and uniform would be added to the benefits.

NEXT OF KIN

“During those days the county workers would buy uniforms and soap to wash the clothes and get compensated, I filled the forms and backdated them to when she started working,”said Mr Oyoo.

Since 2014 he been repeatedly promised that the money – amounting to Sh900,000 for the 25 years that her mother worked at City Hall – will be processed and sent to the family.

But todate nothing has been forthcoming. The county has kept taking them in circles as he is told to come on different dates.

Mr Oyoo says his mother had listed her husband and her four children as her next of kin and are the rightful recipients of the benefits.

“I’m appealing to the county government to give us the money since my father is now old and am spending a lot of money following up this matter,” he said.