Medical workers to resume duty after payment

Medical workers in Embu county, are expected to end their one-week go slow today after the county government began paying them their salary arrears.

The 1,600 workers had boycotted their work stations since Monday with most hospitals across the county discharging yet to recover patients and directing new ones to private hospitals.

By Wednesday afternoon, Embu level-five hospital had discharged most of the 430 patients in had admitted on Sunday, a day before the strike started, and only 81, who were in a critical condition remained.

SUPPLEMENTARY BUDGET

Speaking to Nation on phone, County health executive committee member Johnson Musomi said Embu County Assembly had approved a supplementary budget to pay the workers and had started doing so from Friday.

“We have started processing their salaries and they should resume work. We did a supplementary budget and it went through. We will pay them by Tuesday,” he said.

County Chief Officer in charge of administration, Timothy Guteta said the county had a wage bill of Sh160million per month.

County health workers interim health workers steering committee chairman Aloysius Njoka said they would meet today (Monday) to establish if members’ money had been wired to their accounts.

“We will be meeting to establish if all have received their money. We even have about 15 employees working in projects under economic stimulus programme, who didn’t get their December pay. We could call off the official strike which would have started today. For now, the go-slow  continues as the workers are still demoralized,” he said.

The go-slow came at a time when 16 doctors have left the county after the county government started collecting details on workers’ ethnicity.