Union urges nurses to ignore strike call

The Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied workers (Kudheia) has joined calls for nurses to ignore a strike called by their professional association.

The appeal came as National Nurses Association of Kenya (Nnak) insisted the job boycott is on.

Nnak chairman Jeremiah Maina on Sunday said the strike was meant to push the government to register a nurses’ trade union—Kenyan National Union of Nurses— and implement various allowances for nurses in public hospitals, among other demands.

“The strike is on and I’m calling on all our members across the country to down their tools starting midnight (Sunday) until the government meets our demands,” Mr Maina said.

He said the nurses were under-represented in the umbrella Union of Kenya Civil Servants (UKCS) and Kudheia.

However, Kudheia’s Kenyatta National Hospital representative Alfred Obengo said that nurses were already enjoying a 17 per cent salary increment offered last month. (Read: Nurses advised to ignore strike call)

He said the strike is illegal.

UKCS on Sunday reiterated its call to the nurses to ignore the call to strike.

“The strike is not protected,” UKCS head of Medical Chapter Evans Nasebe said.

Mr Nasebe said Nnak did not have mandate to call nurses to a strike, and that the association was committing a criminal offence.

“A professional association cannot call a strike,” he told a press conference in Nairobi.

Elsewhere, clinical officers have given the government 14 days to register their union or face strike.

Union of Kenya Clinical Officers interim vice chairman Peterson Wachira said majority of their 13,000 members lacked representation in UKCS and Kudheia.

Speaking in Embu on Sunday, Mr Wachira accused the government of trying to divide them by denying them registration.