Kitui nurses join strike over unpaid July salaries

Nurses in Kitui on Tuesday joined other striking county employees to protest against unpaid July salaries.

The aggrieved county staff marched to Governor Charity Ngilu's office and vowed to paralyze services in all hospitals and county government offices until their dues are paid.

Led by Union of Kenya Civil Servants Kitui branch secretary Benjamin Munyalo and Kenya National Union of Nurses official Justina Mwalimu, the workers said they would only report back to work after their salaries are in the bank.

"We have officially gone on strike until our July salaries are paid in full. We have instructed all unionists to vacate their work stations forthwith," Munyalo said.

He urged the state to revert payment of nurses’ salaries to the national government to avoid delays which affected services.

County staff downed their tools last week following delays in payment of their July salaries, which reportedly resulted from the ongoing standoff between the Senate and the National Assembly over the Division of Revenue Bill.

While the Senate proposes that counties should get Sh335 billion from Treasury to run their affairs but the National Assembly has maintained the figure should be Sh316 billion.

Kitui Senator Enoch Wambua on Monday said he had written to the Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo seeking an explanation on how the county exhausted funds meant for July salaries.

 “These workers are innocent people who have discharged their contractual obligations and are entitled to prompt, full and just compensation for their labour as and when the compensation falls due,” Wambua said.

The senator said that the executive’s argument that the salaries were not available because the county assembly rejected the County Appropriation Bill, 2019 supplementary budget  was evidence of glaring incompetence, gross ignorance of the law and unbridled impunity in the executive.

“How the executive gobbled up staff salaries for the month of June is a classic lesson on blind leadership,” wondered Wambua.

On Thursday, June 27 the the assembly rejected the second supplementary budget in its entirety, three days to the end of the financial year 2018-2019.

Assembly Speaker George Ndotto said the purpose of any supplementary budget is to allow for approved expenditure in unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances where no budget provision was made.

Quoting the Public Finance Management Act 2012, Ndotto said any county government may spend money that has not been appropriated if the amount appropriated for any purpose under the County Appropriations Act is insufficient or a need arises for expenditure for a purpose for which no amount had been appropriated by the Act.

“However, Sec 154 of the PFMA, 2012 prohibits an accounting officer from authorising the transfer of an amount that is appropriated for capital expenditure except to defray other capital expenditure. In essence, the second supplementary budget had proposed reallocation of funds from development to recurrent expenditure, which is illegal,” the speaker said.

Further, he said the county government’s expenditure on wages and benefits for its public officers shall not exceed 35 per cent of the county government’s total revenue.

Ndotto said the supplementary budget in question exceeded this threshold which was another illegality.

“Therefore, because of these two reasons, the county assembly which is the custodian of law in the county, cannot be expected to approve any supplementary budget prepared against the law. It is an illegality and it was thus rejected,” he said.