Banking Insurance & Finance Union (BIFU), the little known union represents workers in all Banks, Sacco’s, Insurances, Forex Outlets, NSSF, KRA among other financial industry entities.
Ideally, BIFU should be a progressive trade union, intervening in the economic/ financial matters of public life. Undertaken such noble roles as exposing ills like predatory lending, unfair client relations with financial providers and above all, exploitative employment practices in the financial industry.
However, this has been impossible because BIFU has been captured by the Mugabe of Trade Unions, Isaiah Kubai and his daughter Judy Kaimuri Kubai.
Mr. Kubai has misled BIFU since 1986, when there was no single ATM machine in the country to date. In that time, there has never been election of officials or following of the constitution which requires that officials be voted for, that Annual Delegates Meetings complete with minutes are held. Instead the senile Kubai, in order to have maximum control over BIFU, which apparently collects over Ksh5 million from members, appoints individuals of questionable character, to elective posts.
He has totally raped the constitution of the union.
Kubai has denied workers in the industry an opportunity to have a say in the fate of Trade relations in their industry. Any democratic voices are crushed through staged arrests, abuse of court process to muzzle dissent and outright intimidation.
He has bought senior managers in Kenya’s leading banks and they look the other way because, it is also easy for those managers to sack any employee they don’t like and BIFU will just sit still and do nothing.
A Victory for Bankers
Bankers won in a court case filed by Duncan Muthusi before he Employment and Labour Relations court suing Isaiah Kubai and BIFU for blocking him and two others Alphonse Were and Gabriel Okomo from accessing the audited financial statements for the past 5 years, list of members, locations of branches.
Kubai had at first in 2018 agreed to provide this information to the three following Article 35 of the Constitution in the matter of section 23 of access to information Act No 31 of 2016.
But when they went to BIFU offices, they were arrested by some policemen that has been bribed by BIFU Boss and charged with ‘causing disturbance’.
However, on the 29th November, 2019, Justice Byram Ongaya ordered BIFU to release the information to the three bankers.
‘The Applicant is hereby granted leave to enforce the order issued by the Commission on Administrative Justice conveyed to the respondents by the letter Ref. No. CM/ATI/FIN/000/9/19 — SNK dated 30.07.2019 and to enforce the order as a decree of the Honourable Court to the like effect of a decree of the Court’, the judge said.
The three had accused Mr. Kubai of running the union like a kiosk and as such, the information they sought will go a long way in diagnosing and correcting the ills of the Union even as required by the Union’s constitution.
BIFU Members have resolved to regain their union and engage the necessary government bodies: EACC, DCI, DPP, Asset Recovery Authority to bring this tyrant to justice.
Kubai lost another case on the same day
The crumbling fictitious empire of Isaiah Kubai also suffered another loss in court.
His gag order stopping Alphonse Were and Duncan Muthusi from commenting about him was thrown out by the High Court sitting in Milimani, Nairobi.
