Civil servants strike to kick off at midnight as NHIF talks collapse

What you need to know:

  • Government officials led by acting Cabinet Secretary for Labour, Social Security and Services Ms Raychelle Omamo confirmed that the two day meetings between the two sides failed to yield consensus as a result.
  • The government maintained that it would be impossible the grant the unions’ demand for suspension of the new rates as it would not be in the best interest of other Kenyans who have already complied with the deductions.
  • Mr Sosion said the government had until Tuesday midnight to yield to their demands failure to which it should be ready to handle a serious national strike, which they declared would be one of their fiercest.

The planned nationwide civil servants strike is set to kick off at midnight after talks between the government and trade unions over the new National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) rates collapsed on Tuesday evening.

Union representatives under their umbrella Trade Unions Congress (TUC) stormed out of the meeting with senior government and NHIF officials after the government declined to grant their demand that the legal notice enforcing the new rates be suspended until negotiations are completed.

Government officials led by acting Cabinet Secretary for Labour, Social Security and Services Ms Raychelle Omamo confirmed that the two day meetings between the two sides failed to yield consensus as a result.

The government maintained that it would be impossible the grant the unions’ demand for suspension of the new rates as it would not be in the best interest of other Kenyans who have already complied with the deductions.

“As of this evening, this is where the discussions have reached,” she said. “The position of the government and particularly the NHIF is that the issue of suspension has been canvassed by the Trade Unions Congress many times before and it has been declined,” she said at a briefing at the NHIF offices.

And speaking after storming out of the meeting, the union officials led by the TUC Secretary General Mr Wilson Sosion said they would shut their doors on the government at the click of midnight.

“This is real, this is not fiction, prepare your members,” he directed affiliate unions which include the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) which he leads, the University Academic Staff Union (UASU), the Dock Workers Union (DWU) and the Union of Civil Servants.

Mr Sosion said the government had until Tuesday midnight to yield to their demands failure to which it should be ready to handle a serious national strike, which they declared would be one of their fiercest.

“Now the train is slowly leaving the station and it will be moving at a terrific speed, let everybody move out of the rail line,” he said. “After midnight, don’t look for us because we will be switching off our phones, we will teach them the hard way,” he added.

Dr Charles Mukhwaya, TUC’s Deputy Secretary General said the unions’ position remains that the rates introduced by the NHIF were not only bad but irregular and amount to robbing workers. “We have been trying to get an agreement to correct this to no avail,” he said.

But according to Ms Omamo, flanked by Education Cabinet Secretary Prof Jacob Kaimenyi said the trade unions were insincere.

She denied that the unions had been promised a suspension of the new rates arguing that it was only one of the proposals that had been put on the table by parties during Monday’s meeting.

“I think the unions are not being fair to themselves and to us,” she said. “Yesterday, we put proposals on the table and people were to go away and reflect on them and come back today to discuss the same. There was no agreement, if there was, we would have signed it right then. What we had were proposals,” she said.

The acting Labour CS pleaded with the unions to remain open to dialogue. “As the person who called these meetings, I remain hopeful and optimistic that an agreement will be reached and I urge the parties to create room for continued negotiations,” she stated.

“I hope that the parties can find room to cooperate and dialogue because the government is willing to dialogue,” she said.