Bank workers are among the worst paid professionals I know, at least in the non-management levels. You ask what a graduate cashier in Equity or Family Bank earns and you are lost for words - take home is rarely over 25K pm (after deductions and taxes).
Then you read what the chief executives of the banks are earning and you are lost for words.
The other day I read that KCB’s Oigara earned about 280m last year in salaries and allowances.
Coop Bank’s Muriuki earned Sh376 million.
And this is before you cost what they expend in housing, travel, entertainment, medical etc etc.
How do you justify these obscene salaries in a small developing economy such as Kenya? CLEANERS IN THE SAME BANKS ARE BEING PAID SH10,000 A MONTH (the banks avoid legal liability by hiring independent firms who pay the cleaners as low as 7K) and somebody is earning nearly Sh30 million a month?
I bank with KCB and recently issued a cheque that bounced. I was fined Sh3,600.
Worse, when I want a printed statement of my account I am charged Sh150 a printed page. Mind you, at a cyber, whose core business is printing, I am charged just Sh10. AS A BANK KCB IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE MONEY FROM BANKING SERVICES, NOT SILLY PENALTIES OR PRINTING STATEMENTS. Those are not its core business! But I guess they have to make money hand-over-fist to pay Oigara.
Why do we allow this shit to happen? I do not believe that Kenya needs a revolution. But Kenyans need to be much more militant about this stupid exploitative theft by a small elite.
Can you imagine what Muriuki’s Sh300 million - assuming he’s paid a decent Sh76 million a year - could do for the lowest paid 2,000 Coop Bank employees? Divided equally that could be about Sh150,000 more for each, or a Sh12,000pm raise - life-changing.
What’s more both Coop and KCB are publicly quoted companies. They have shareholders like you and me. Any extra monies paid to the CEO are monies that should come to us, the shareholders. These guys are robbing you and me, the small man.
This kind of inequality imperils the continued survival of this country.
[SIZE=1]PS: Nikubaya jameni, tumeni kakitu…[/SIZE]