The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) was stuck in a time warp. Everything about the State broadcaster felt antiquated and when the airwaves were liberalised it meant that the station had no place in the new order of things.
KBC is now on a resurgence. The station has absorbed veteran news anchors in a bid to be competitive.
KBC is governed by a Code of Regulations (CoR) which categorizes staff as either permanent or those working on contract basis.
Permanent employees enjoy staff retirement benefits, staff insurance and medical schemes. The MD and his deputy are appointed by the board on three year renewable contract.
Pay of employees
Under the CoR, the TV news anchor earns Ksh2,000 per bulletin. The same amount as those reading Business and Sports news.
Radio news anchors take home Ksh1,400 per bulletin.
Those who run their own programmes like Good Morning Kenya and Sports Check earn Ksh4,000. The amount was initially Ksh5,000 but went down because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
To cut on costs, the corporation has done away with separate business and sports anchors and has the same set of anchors presenting the entire bulletin.
Veteran news anchors
The new ‘old’ news anchors were hired on a contract of Ksh80,000. One of the veteran news anchor has to do one news bulletin per week translating to 4 shows per month. For every bulletin, they get paid Ksh20,000.
The new entrants have a better deal. An example is given of a new male anchor who only reads news twice a week and gets paid Ksh10,000 per bulletin while his co-anchor- who does the bulk of the work-gets paid Ksh2,000.
In a long post shared by Wahome Thuku, the employees are not happy with the terms given to the new team. Part of the post reads:
This male anchor will only go to KBC to read news. The co-anchor is expected at KBC every day to do all the other work.
It gets even more interesting. One of those hired to read news at KBC is actually an employee of another State Corporation where she works in the Communications Department. Really?
The employees are not complaining about the new hiring, they don’t care even if the corporation hired octogenarians. They are only discontented with the terms. Why should I earn 2k to read a 30 minutes’ news bulletin with another person who is earning Ksh10,000 for the same?
