The Employment (Amendment) Act 2022 was assented into law on April 4, 2022, by His Excellency the President of Kenya. The below changes came into effect on April 22, 2022.

Employers will no longer require job applicants to produce Clearance and Compliance such as certificates of good conduct, Eacc Clearance, HELB Clearance etc., at the initial point of a job application. The objective is to ease the financial burden of job applicants, mostly young destitute youth, who had to part with a cumulative amount of around Kes. 6,000 to acquire the certificates.

  1. The fees for applying for the Clearance and Compliance Certificates have been scrapped. It will now be free to apply for these Clearance and Compliance Certificates from the relevant Institutions such as HELB.
  • However, job applicants applying for Public Service positions will be required to submit the Clearance and Compliance Certificates.
  1. Importantly, job applicants who are successful, and issued with a letter of offer will still be required to submit the Clearance and Compliance Certificates.
  2. Employers have A RIGHT TO WITHDRAW LETTERS OF OFFER if the prospective employees do not submit the Clearance and/or Compliance certificates as requested.

Our recommendation is that Employers should review their Human Procedures and Policies Manual and Employment Contracts in order to align these changes to avoid falling afoul of the law.

Please note that, the contents of this newsletter are intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. It should not be relied upon without legal advice on its contents. Should you require further information or assistance on Compliance or any other legal issue, kindly feel free to contact us at info@wka.co.ke