The Employment and Labour Relations
Court has on Friday directed the government to pay all doctors,
including non-practicing medics, their five months' allowances in
arrears.
The ruling comes after the Salaries and
Remuneration Commission (SRC) had amended the return-to-work formula in
March to exclude administrative doctors from the new allowance benefits.
Following the end of the 100-day strike, two
non-practicing doctors moved to court to challenge the SRC's amendments,
with the court ruling in their favour against the government today.
“An
order is hereby issued compelling he ministry of Health and the Council
of Governors (CoG) to pay in arrears all payable allowances to doctors
as provided for in both the December 12, 2011 and the March 14, 2017
Return To Work Formulae withheld and or withdrawn from the affected
doctors since December 2011,” said Judge Nderi Nduma.
“Any
disobedience of the court order will result in penal consequences and
in contempt of court seeking therein your detention and other punishment
for you,” the judge added.
Ordered exclusion
The
SRC had in March directed the Health ministry and county governors to
exclude doctors not serving in hospitals from being paid emergency call
allowance, non-practice allowance, risk allowance and extraneous
allowance.
There are about 200 non-practice doctors in the country
working in Afya House and under other autonomous State agencies such as
the National Quality Control Lab, the National Malaria Control Program
and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board.
As per the ruling,
these doctors will now be entitled to a doctors' allowance of Sh80,000
and a risk allowance of Sh20,000 for those in job groups Q and above.
Doctors in job groups P and N will get Sh72,000 in doctors’ allowance and Sh20,000 in risk allowance.
This
means that if the 200 medics who were left out are to be paid in
arrears from January, the government will need to set aside an
additional over Sh100 million to cater for these new benefits.
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