•The MTRH management said its services will not be affected by the strike. VC Kosgey said issues are being sorted out.
• the Treasury released enhanced allowances for for the doctor-lecturers two years ago but the Moi University never gave them the money, about Sh1.5 million each.
Image: FILE
The strike by medical lecturers at the Moi University Medical school entered the second day on Wednesday as strikers demanded government intervention to keep the institution functioning.
About 200 physician-lecturers are on strike.
The doctor's union North Rift branch secretary Kamunzi Mulei said university management led by Vice Chancellor Prof Isaac Kosgey had not responded to their demand for their enhanced allowances.
The money amounts to more than Sh200 million in enhanced clinical allowances. The funds were released by the treasury but never paid to the doctors, each getting about Sh1.5 million.
The university is facing a cash crisis.
Mulei said the doctors would remain on strike until the money is released.
The lecturers union, Uasu, urged the university management to shut the institution until disputes on salaries, allowances and other issues are sorted out.
“We are worried that we may have to go home because if the strike persists the college will not operate,” student leader Joseph Kemboi said.
Some of the students said they had been at the institution for more than eight years pursuing medical courses that are supposed to take six years.
Prof Kosgey said the row with the lecturers was being sorted out. However, the lecturers said they would not attend any meetings on the matter because past efforts had failed.
The medical school has more than 200 students who complain that they are now idling at the institution because of the strike.
The more than 200 doctors are also lecturers at the Moi University School of Medicine .
Mulei said they had issued a two-week strike notice that lapsed last Sunday.
“We are in the second day of the strike and we will not go back until the money is paid to our members,” Mulei said.
He said the Treasury had released the money to the university after it was approved and asked why it was not released to the doctor-lecturers.
He said the strike would hurt services at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital where the doctors provide clinical services.
The MTRH management, however, said its services will not be affected by the strike.
CEO Wilson Aruasa said the facility has its own doctors, 320 in total, and other medics who will continue to work as usual.
“Our staff has have no issue with the hospital and services will run as usual, Dr Aruasa said.
Davji Atella, the KPMDU secretary general, met the doctors in Eldoret.
He said the union had written to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to probe what happened to the doctors' money.
“The doctor-lecturers have gone on strike because the university has refused to pay the money that was released more than two years ago," Atella said.
He said they have been patient long enough and dialogue has failed.
"There is a lot of misuse of funds at Moi University that has made it difficult for the doctors to be paid their dues. The doctors can not continue working yet the money they deserve to be paid is missing,” he said.
Atella said the medics had been blacklisted by financial institutions because deductions from their salaries were not being remitted by the universities.
He said all medical practitioners, specialists, pharmacists and all dentists would go on strike.
(Edited by V. Graham)