Outrage As Tatu City Posts Discriminatory Job Advertisement

By Williams Steve

A job advertisement posted by Tatu City on its X platform and website has generated widespread criticism with several X users accusing the beleaguered company of racism and discrimination based on national origin.

The job application titled “REAL ESTATE ADVISOR – COMMERCIAL & INDUSTRIAL (KENYAN-INDIAN ORIGIN)” was shared on it’s official X account and website and indicated that applicants should include Kenya-Indian Origin which is in the job title description when sending their CVs to the company.

Tatu City which describes itself as “Africa’s leading urban developer’s in Kenya” has been embroiled in a dispute with Kiambu County Government officials whom they have accused of extortion. The company is an ambitious 5,000-acre new city featuring homes, schools, offices, a shopping district, medical clinics, nature areas, a sports and entertainment complex, and a manufacturing zone for over 250,000 residents and thousands of day visitors. 

Schools and businesses are already claimed to be operational in Tatu City. Tatu City claims it is Kenya’s first operational Special Economic Zone, offering reduced corporate taxes, zero-rated VAT, and import duty exemptions, among other advantages.

Popular social media influencer, Kimuzi, highlighted the deleted post saying “Tatu City wamedelete hii. Hii ndo vituko we are fighting against.”. The post included a screengrab of the purported post. “How can they start to discriminate against us in our own country?” a social media user asked. “Tatu city gets zero rated Vat, reduced corporate taxes, import duty exemptions, then they discriminate the same people, taxpayers are subsidizing (paying for) the same racism. You are paying for it because Tatu City foregone taxes are picked from something else like bread etc.” another user added.

Discrimination based on national or ethnic origin in job hiring is strictly prohibited by the law in Kenya. Article 27 of the Constitution of Kenya provides “Equality and Freedom from discrimination”. Clause 4 specifically prohibits discrimination based on “ethnic or social origin”.

A search for the discriminatory job listing on their website brings a “Page Not Found” error which indicates that the particular job listing has been taken down. However, we verified the listing to be true using web cache content. Cache is temporary data storage used by web pages for quick retrieval on subsequent loads. Web cache includes HTML pages and images saved by browsers or search engines to conserve bandwidth. A similar job listing appears on a third party job aggregator site.

Efforts to reach out to the company for clarification hit a snag as the company told us it would get back to us. We had not yet received an answer by the time of publishing this article.