Former employees of the troubled Standard Media Group have issued a notice of protests to the Nairobi Regional Police Commander. The former workers are planning to hold protests in seven days over salary arrears that they say the Standard Media Group has refused to pay them.
These Ex-Standard Media Group employees were retrenched by the company over the last two years. The workers have told the police in their notice that they will hold protests next week from Tuesday, April 15, to Thursday, April 17, 2025. The protests will begin at Airtel offices then proceed to General Motors before heading to the Standard Group offices on Mombasa Road.
The Standard Media Group has been delaying salaries for its employees as it falls deeper into a financial crisis. Some employees have been reported to have gone for as many as 10 months without salaries.
In mid last year, the employees staged a mass walkout from their workstations in protest against months of unpaid salaries.
“For seven months now, staff at the Standard Media Group, the oldest media house in Kenya, have gone through untold suffering due to unpaid salaries despite hard economic times in the countries,” KUJ Secretary General Eric Oduor had said.
In its latest financials, the media house reported a half year net loss of Sh. 111.6 million. The loss came as the troubled media house’s revenues dipped by 16.8 per cent to Sh. 1.05 billion from the previous half’s Sh. 1.3 billion in the 6-month period.
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It attributed the loss to a business environment that it said was constrained, against a backdrop of growing global uncertainties, floods, sustained geopolitical tensions, tightening monetary policies in advanced and local economies and a depressed consumer spending in advertising.
In the previous full year, Standard posted a net loss of Sh. 1.26 billion which was an increase from the 1 billion loss that the media house recorded in the previous 2022 financial year.
During that year under review, revenue fell by 13 per cent to Sh. 2.4 billion. This reduction was attributed to reduced business from advertising clients.
