Healthcare unions have taken their fight for better employment terms for the UHC staff to the Senate.
The union officials who appeared before the Senate Health Committee chaired by Uasin Gishu Senator Jackson Mandagor have rejected the move by the government to extend the contracts for the staff by another three years.
The Kenya Union of Clinical Officers and the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union officials are now banking on the committee to look into the issue and have the stalemate unlocked.
In their submissions, they argued that there exists a payment disparity between colleagues whom they perform equal work on permanent and pensionable terms in terms of remunerations, allowances and pensionable benefits.
“We call for an increase in budgetary allocation to cater for their improved salaries,” KUCO chairperson Peterson Wachira said.
The government has maintained that there are no resources to convert the contracts of the more than 8,850 staff to permanent and pensionable.
Head of Preventive and promotive health at the ministry Andrew Mulwa explained that the decision to hire them on the contract was arrived at with the hope that the economy would have grown to absorb them by the time they come to an end three years later.
“The reality is the market does not have space for them,” Mulwa said during a past interview.
“Which is a lesser evil, for them to go home with no contracts or to extend the contracts for three years hoping that within the three years, we would be able to grow the economy and be able to absorb them?” he paused.
KMPDU SG Davji Atellah told the committee that even though the country has accelerated progress towards UHC, concerted efforts are needed to tackle the largest sources of inefficiency within the health sector.
Atellah noted that the country needs to prioritise quality primary care services rather than highly specialized health services at the hospital level and reduce input-related inefficiencies.
This, he said includes the availability of competent human resources for health.
“The government should create an appropriate framework to incentivize and monitor health workers to be present at health facilities and deliver quality services to patients,” Atellah said.
They have called on the government to embrace and implement the principle of equality and the prohibition against discrimination of workers as enshrined in the Constitution.
