Counties will now be required to remit statutory deductions from healthcare workers by the fifth of every month beginning February.
The Council of Governors is expected to hold a meeting to deliberate on the issue that had seen doctors threaten to down their tools.
Counties have been on the spot for deducting statutory funds such as NHIF from healthcare workers but failing to remit or doing so after the stimulated deadlines thus making healthcare workers miss out on the very services they are offering.
This will also see counties pay healthcare workers not later than fifth as a change from the perennial salary delays with workers going for more than three months without pay.
This emerged in a series of meetings held between the Ministry of Health, CoG and the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union.
“It was agreed that CoG should have a meeting within themselves and ensure that no county goes beyond the fifth of every month before paying their workers and they are saying they are going to do it within the first month,” KMPDU SG Dr Davji Atellah.
According to the union salary delays and unremitted deductions have pushed healthcare workers into untold suffering due to hardships leading to depression.
“The most honest of the workers in the counties are the healthcare workers because they only base their livelihoods on the salaries that they get,” Atellah said.
“When there is a delay for a month or two they get into the bewilderment of frustrations and they get into difficulties to pay the bills and to act.”
Just last month, clinicians demanded rehabilitation services for healthcare workers saying that deaths and suicide rates among them are on a worrying trend.
“The challenge is spread across the country. It is only that we have managed to pick just a few that we have randomly buried,” Kenya Clinical officers Association SG Joseph Chebii said.
According to the union, health workers have been faced with a myriad of challenges in the last 10 years as most county governments have failed to prioritise their welfare.
