Call off strike, Health Cabinet Secretary Macharia tells KNH staff

The government has promised to implement the Comprehensive Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiated by the Kenya National Hospital unionisable staff from July in bid to end a paralysing strike that started Wednesday.

Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia said the National Treasury has agreed to provide resources to enable the ministry meet the demands of the hospital staff who went on strike on Wednesday throwing operations in the country’s largest referral hospital into a crisis.

Mr Macharia appealed to the KNH staff to call off the strike and resume work saying that the dispute has been resolved.

"That the Government will ensure full implementation of the Comprehensive Bargaining Agreement (CBA) from July 2013, and that the National Treasury will provide resources to ensure full implementation of the CBA beginning July 2013,” Mr Macharia said in a statement.

On Wednesday, over 2000 nurses joined other hospital staff in the strike and accused the KNH management of renegading on the 2009 CBA agreement.

“I am therefore urging the union officials to call off the industrial action with immediate effect to ensure resumption of full services by all their members. I further call upon all the staff to fully cooperate to alleviate the suffering of the patients," said the Cabinet Secretary.

The nurses are demanding a 46 per cent increment before resuming work forcing the hospital management to hire some 500 private attendants to clean the hospital.

Some wards were also attended to by casual workers.

The salary deal in contention was negotiated by the Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions and Hospital Workers (KUDHEIHA)