Governors have written a protest letter to the Health ministry against the alleged unilateral recruitment of staff to be deployed to the counties.
This follows an ad by the ministry on Thursday that requested applications for emergency deployment in emergency and child-health services.
“While we recognise that the national government has constitutional responsibility to offer capacity building and technical assistance to the counties, this does not mandate your ministry to unilaterally and without any consultation proceed to recruit staff for the counties,” the Council of Governors said in the November 18 letter addressed to Health Principal Secretary Nicholas Muraguri.
“In essence, it is not contemplated under this function that devolved powers are exercised by the ministry. We urgently call upon your office to immediately withdraw the advert.”
The governors said health functions, excluding national referral facilities, had been fully transferred to counties by the Constitution. They said Articles 6(2) and 189 create compulsory obligation for one level of government not to interfere in the other’s exercise of its constitutional functions.
“In this regard, the county governments enjoy human resource recruitment autonomy. It is not constitutionally permissible for the national government to recruit staff for devolved health,” reads the letter signed by CoG chairman Peter Munya (pictured).