Striking nurses protest outside the Mombasa governor’s offices on October 4. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Nurses have secured a pay deal addressing their uniform and
nursing service allowances, the key contentious issue that had prolonged
the impasse, ending a five month old strike that has caused Kenyans
endless pains and deaths.
The deal followed a four-hour
closed door meeting at the council of governors' (CoG) offices in
Westlands between the nurses’ union, Ministry of Health, governors and
County Public Service Boards.
“The strike that begun on
June 5, has now been called off with immediate effect and those not
able to go back to work immediately have up to tomorrow 5pm (Friday),”
said the Kenya National Union of Nurses secretary-general, Seth Panyako.
“We
have reached a deal. Sometimes it may not be as what members would have
wanted and we apologise to Kenyans for a bear-collapse of the
healthcare system because of the strike,” he added.
The
health workers have agreed to a payment structure that would see their
uniform allowance increase by 33 per cent per year up to financial year
2020/2021.
This means that when the allowance take
effect in the financial year 2018/2019 each nurse would get a uniform
allowance of Sh15,00 up from Sh10,000 increasing by Sh5,000 to Sh25,000
payable in a year in financial year 2020/2021.
The
Nursing Service Allowance will go up by up to 13.2 per cent from
Sh23,000 in the financial year 2018/2019 to Sh30,000 in 2020/2021.
The
collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that the nurses have been pushing
for is expected to be signed and registered in court in the next 30
days.
“We hope this would be free from any sort of hostile environment from parties involved,” said Mr Panyako.
Disease outbreaks
The
strike came at a time when the country is facing serious health threats
including a malaria outbreak in Baringo, West Pokot and Turkana that
resulted to deaths due to lack of healthcare services as nurses stayed
away from over 50 per cent of public facilities, thus hampering
diagnosis and early interventions.
Kenya has also been grappling with a cholera outbreak that has now hit Embu County.
Nurses
have agreed to call off the strike at a time when the country is on
high alert due to a deadly plague outbreak in Madagascar that has killed
over 100 people and a resurgence of the Marburg virus disease in
neighbouring Uganda.
Marburg has so far killed three people in Kween district, a part of Uganda that is close to the border with Kenya.
Nurses are a primary point of contact in any health facility before diagnosis and treatment is administered to patients.
No comments:
Post a Comment