Trans Nzoia health workers demand better terms of service
Officials of KHPS in Trans Nzoia address their members outside the county government’s offices on February 22, 2017. They issued a one-week strike notice. PHOTO | PHILIP BWAYO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Among the issues they want addressed urgently are overdue promotions and re-designation of their members.
- Deputy Governor Stanley Tarus said they have received a memorandum from the lobby group.
- He promised to soon hold talks with their leaders to find a solution to all the grievances that have been raised.
Workers under the Kenya Health Professionals Society (KHPS) in Trans Nzoia have issued a one-week strike notice to the county government if demands they have raised pertaining their welfare are not addressed in time.
The lobby group, which comprises 17 carders of health workers who are not nurses or doctors, said they want their plight to be addressed since they have for long been forgotten in debates relating to better terms of health workers.
“We have been left out in the quest for better terms yet we play a big role in the provision of healthcare.
“Nurses and doctors depend on us in their day to day work,” the union’s area branch secretary Francis Barchebo said in Kitale.
Mr Barchebo said among the issues they want addressed urgently are overdue promotions and re-designation of their members which he said has not been carried out objectively for the past four years.
DRUGS SHORTAGE
“We also want the county government to address the challenge of drugs and supplies shortage.
“We are also unhappy with the delays by the county government in the remittance of statutory deductions on our salaries,” he said.
Deputy Governor Stanley Tarus said they have received a memorandum from the lobby group and promised to soon hold talks with their leaders to find a solution to all the grievances that have been raised.
“We have advised them to shelve their planned industrial action to give enough time for negotiations that will ensure that they don’t paralyse the provision of health services that is already affected [by] the nurses’ and doctors’ strike,” said Dr Tarus.
Elsewhere, Endebess MP Robert Pukose called on the national government to expedite talks with the doctors to enable them call off their strike saying Kenyans are suffering in their quest for healthcare.
“I urge the president and his deputy to ensure the strike is called off to save the country from the agony of losing more lives since not all are able to afford private healthcare,” said Mr Pukose.
