A section of Taita Taveta youth leaders have asked Governor Granton Samboja to unconditionally allow nurses and clinical officers who were fired for participating in a national strike to return to work.
The Young Aspiring Movement leaders said operations at public health facilities are still slow since the County Public Service Board, was yet to allow the nurses to resume work.
In a statement, they called on the government to look into an alternative way of solving the stalemate with health workers.
“Most of the nurses and clinical officers are yet to resume duties. It would have been better if the government sought an easy way to solve this problem instead of subjecting them to writing appeals,” Idris Mohammed, a member of the group, said.
Mohammed said health facilities were overwhelmed by the large number of patients occasioned by the prolonged strike and lay off.
The strike, he said, had adversely affected service provision in public health facilities that mainly serve low-income patients.
The over 409 nurses and clinical officers were laid off in January for allegedly taking part in an illegal strike.
The Labour and Relations court however ordered the health workers to appeal their case to their employer with 14 days for consideration to resume work.
Governor Samboja on Tuesday said his administration has successfully managed the health crisis.
He said the government had addressed nearly all their grievances, noting that services were nearly resuming normalcy.
“We addressed 9 of 10 grievances raised by the workers. Increasing their allowances was out of our hands as it was an issue to be attended to by the National Government. The workers disregarded our requests to resume duty. They went to court and were directed to address their issues with the employer,” he said.
The governor said healthcare workers wanted an enhanced group cover, risk allowance, quality PPE’s, isolation and treatment centres.
He said those who made appeals through the County Public Service Board have been allowed to go back to their work stations.
Samboja said 97 clinical officers and nurses had resumed duties while 200 more had sent their appeals to the CPSB.
The department has also hired 97 new nurses and clinical officers.
The county assembly last week adopted a report from the Health and Sanitation committee on the county healthcare workers strike that extended the timeframe for submitting appeals.
The committee chairperson Omar Ahmed said by the lapse of the 14 days only a few health workers had appealed to the CPSB, forcing the committee to recommend an extension of 10 more days to receive appeals.
“The healthcare workers whose appeals are successful should be reinstated in the same position, years of service and should be paid all their salaries,” Omar said.
The committee recommends the health department to have quarterly engagements with the health workers to deliberate on their concerns to reduce the frequency of strikes.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
