13-member committee formed to consider doctors' demands as strike enters day 9

Head of Public Service Felix Koskei on Thursday evening at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) convened what he described as court-mandated talks bringing together among others Cabinet Secretaries for Health, Finance, Public Service, Labour and Social Protection as well as officials from the KMPDU, SRC and PSC.

The talks were meant to resolve the impasse that has slowly brought the health sector to its knees due to a strike which started on March 14, 2024.

The 7-hour meeting however ended without a deal for doctors to go back to work with the parties involved reading from different scripts.

According to KMPDU Secretary General Dr. Davji Atellah, “The strike is still on as we discuss those things because as a union we only call off a strike after meeting our national advisory council and having a return-to-work formula which we don’t have.”

Koskei, however, stated; “As far as we are concerned there is no strike…if at all there are people who are not working, those are people who are now absconding duty because the court has pronounced itself and there is no strike as we speak.”

What initially started as a push for the immediate posting of medical interns has since morphed into a list of 19 demands laid on the table for discussion as grievances by the doctors.

Key among them include: perennial delayed posting and general mismanagement of the medical internship program, immediate payment of the basic salary arrears for doctors as per the 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), a plan for employment of doctors and post graduate training, lack of comprehensive medical covers for union members, poor contracts and exploitation of doctors, inadequate funding of the health sector with counties requiring Ksh.425 billion to be able to adequately meet the needs in the health sector.

Dr. Atellah stated that the parties only scratched the surface in the long journey to reach a truce.

“Before we actually sat down, they had not checked the real issues that is why we had to give the breakdown and explain all the issues…but we need to have a real sitting now for them to give us the solutions to these things.,” he stated.

The medics held their hard line stance on the issue of intern doctors, a demand that the Head of Public Service said is economically impractical.

“Our friends from the other side want the interns to still be called interns and they want them to be paid Ksh.206,000 as opposed to the other interns who are being paid Ksh.25,000 or Ksh.35,000 and they want the government to employ all of them at the same time. We have laid down the challenges we have in terms of the fiscal situation, we are going to look and how much we have and to see how many we can accommodate,” said Koskei.

He further revealed that the meeting resolved to form a 13-member committee made up of representatives from KMPDU, Council of Governors, Ministry of Health and other stakeholders involved in the negotiations.

The union leaders have met government officials several times with little if at all any progress made towards ending the strike.

A report by the newly formed committee is expected latest Monday next week to prescribe the best dose to treat the ailing health sector and end the agony for thousands of patients in health facilities across the country where services were on Friday affected for the 9th day of the strike.

“Goodwill comes out of previous commitments that were actually fulfilled…if we have issues that have been fulfilled then we have goodwill, but if out of the 19 all we have is promisory notes it becomes stale and sometimes if you deposit a stale cheque it will tell you out of funds,” added Dr. Atellah.

This even as doctors in Nairobi and Uasin Gishu counties on Friday staged demos calling for the immediate resignation of Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha, accusing her of ignoring their plight and grievances.