Cleaning company, KAA deny ever employing stowaway who fell from plane
By Hilary KimuyuColnet Limited, a company which Sky News reported was the employer of a Kenyan stowaway who fell from a Kenya Airways plane in London have denied reports that the man was their employee.
Similarly, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has also denounced reports that man identified as Paul Manyasi worked at the airport garden earlier this year.
NO SUCH EMPLOYEE
Sky News on Tuesday identified the stowaway as Paul Manyasi, further reporting that he used to work for a cleaning company called Colnet.
But in separate statements, both companies have contradicted the reports by the British media house.
Colnet Limited said it was surprised that Sky News Networks was focused on connecting the stowaway with them.
“Colnet is aware of the incident by way of fact that there were investigations carried out on the stowaway incident and the company has provided all its employees’ records and information to the investigative authorities which confirm that there is no employee by the name Paul Manyasi. This fact can easily be ascertained by KAA,” said Colnet in a statement.
Sky News has quoted a woman who claimed to have worked with the victim telling the reporter that they were told by their supervisor to keep it a secret that an employee had gone missing on the same day.
According to her, the supervisor called all employees the following day and told them that one of them was missing although he was not sure who it was.
She added that the supervisor told them not to tell anybody until the identity of the missing worker had been known.
INVESTIGATIONS
But in their statement Colnet said that for an employee to work in the restricted areas of the airport, he/she requires a special pass which is only issued after thorough vetting by KAA authority.
“There are records of the passes issued and all Colnet employees are accounted for without failure at the end of every shift and we can confirm without doubt that we don’t have, and have never had Paul Manyasi as an employee.”
The company further advised those who were interviewed by Sky News to come forward and provide the police with all the information they have so that they can get to the bottom of the matter to avoid unnecessary and untrue speculations and to bring peace and closure to the unfortunate family of the deceased.
In their statement, KAA said Colnet Limited Kenya is a cleaning company contracted by KAA and the name Paul Manyasi does not appear in the JKIA register.
“A security multia-gency team has conducted investigations on the allegations made in the (Sky News) news article to the effect that the stowaway worked at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and would like to state that the identity of the stowaway is an open and active investigation and any information received will be investigated to ensure a factual conclusion,” KAA said in a statement.
In its story, Sky News had reported that it had tracked down the girlfriend of the 29-year-old, who has been missing since July, and confirmed that he worked as a cleaner at the airport.
VICTIM’S GIRLFRIEND
According to Sky News, the pair worked as cleaners at JKIA and that Manyasi went missing at the end of June.
“The last time I saw him, we were at work, he suddenly disappeared, nobody knows where he went,” Sky News quoted the said girlfriend.
Sky News further reported that the girlfriend revealed that they had been planning to get married.
In October, London police had said a postmortem examination of the man’s body, then believed to have been in his 30s, revealed the cause of death as multiple injuries.
“We have pursued a number of lines of inquiry in what has been a very sad incident to investigate. This man has a family somewhere who needs to know what has happened to their loved one,” said Detective Sergeant Paul Graves, of the South Central Command Unit.
Graves added that their probe had included liaising with the Kenyan authorities but their efforts to establish his identify had been futile.