A tweet published on September 16 contained a banner of an alleged job advertisement for vacancies at the National Construction Authority (NCA). The post, as per the attached banner, advertises 18 positions supposedly to be filled by over 1,000 people in various departments at NCA.
According to the advert, those interested are required to send their applications via email by September 25, indicating what position they would be applying for and are directed to only apply for one position lest they risk being disqualified.
Iko job. pic.twitter.com/hr44fB2eJK
— indukusy (@indukusy) September 16, 2020
Background
The NCA is a government body mandated to regulate the construction industry. Some of its roles include licensing contractors and construction workers and registering them as well as overseeing construction works.
The corporation was established in 2011 through the National Construction Authority Act and was founded on the origins of the National Construction Corporation (NCC) that was formed by African contractors to agitate for their rights in the construction industry which was then dominated by the British and Indians. NCC collapsed in 1988.
Verification
The NCA on September 15 published a tweet warning the public that the job advertisement is not legitimate. The tweet, which was shared on the NCA’s official Twitter account, advised the public to disregard the ad as any official communication from the organization is ordinarily published on the NCA official Facebook or Twitter accounts, the local dailies or the NCA website. A Facebook post was also published to warn the public against the job ad.
1/2. The Authority advises all stakeholders to disregard a fake notice being circulated, titled 'Job Opportunities 2020.' All communication from the Authority is published either in the dailies, on the official website or on the official social media pages. pic.twitter.com/kWFlfpOmAC
— National Construction Authority (@ncakenya) September 15, 2020
A look at the careers page on the NCA website shows that the organization is currently hiring. However, the application process is different. Job applications for the NCA are handled via the email careers@nca.go.ke and candidates are required to fill an application form which is found on the careers page of the official NCA website.
The emails jobs2020@nca.co.ke and jobs.nca2020@gmail.com are questionable.
For the first address, jobs2020@nca.co.ke, the domain associated with it is suspect. The NCA’s domain is nca.go.ke not nca.co.ke. A look at the Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC) registry reveals that, actually, the said domain is unregistered and, as such, doesn’t exist.
The validity of the second email address provided, jobs.nca2020@gmail.com, can be questioned by the fact that it is not an official address tied to the NCA’s domain, as would most likely be the case for any communication with a government agency or any entity of repute. While there are instances where free email services such as Gmail and even Yahoo Mail are used by various agencies to conduct official business, for whatever reason, this alone, is a red flag.
In Kenya, email addresses belonging to various entities associated with the government, including state corporations like the NCA, go with the .go.ke top-level domain (TLD). It would be expected that such addresses are the ones that would appear in a job advertisement from a government agency and not some random free email accounts that anyone can create in a matter of minutes.
Verdict
The banner circulating online advertising jobs at the National Construction Authority (NCA) is FAKE.
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