Clinical officers went on strike on December 7 demanding timely payment of salaries, adequate provision of PPE, allowances bump among other demands.
After a series of meetings with the governments, they called off their strike on January 1.
One week later, they went on strike again after their agreement was rejected by the Council of Governors. The strike enters its forty-second day today. Nurses and lab technologists are also on strike.
Patients continue to suffer due to lack of health services in public facilities.
Despite the return-to-work formula documents being ready, the CoG has distanced themselves from the process, saying they were not consulted. The CoG has maintained they won’t pay the striking healthcare workers a single coin.
But KUCO maintained that their strike is legal and protected as there is no court order that has invalidated it.
They termed as ridiculous the governors' complaint about the perennial and prolonged strikes yet they were yet to sign the agreement with workers.
“We, as healthcare workers, are in a very difficult situation. We will not go and we cannot go on a suicide mission. When we swore the Hippocratic Oath we swore to protect the lives of our patients, the protection of that life includes ourselves vacating the hospitals if we feel we are presenting more harm to the patients coming to us than we are able to do good to them,” KUCO chairman Peterson Wachira said.
“So for those who are saying we should consider our oath; we are actually within our oath. One of the reasons we are out was to ensure a safe working environment which would be safe for the patient and for us.”
Gibore said their strike was necessitated by poor and unsafe working conditions especially, lack of quality and adequate PPE.
Other grievances were dubious contracts, lack of enhanced comprehensive medical cover and group life insurance, understaffing, failure to pay UHC staff for more than six months and non-commensurate and discriminative risk allowance.
