How to access kContext/process variable from custom work item handlers in BPMS 6

Issue

Is there a way to access kcontext or process variable in custom work item handlers?
- Passing in "kcontext" just like "ksession" to the constructor of the handler is not recognized.
- The following code is also tried but when calling getVariable on the kContext it's throwing an java.lang.NullPointerException:

        ProcessContext kcontext = new ProcessContext(this.kSession);