Health CS Susan Nakhumicha has maintained that the ministry does not have the funds required to post interns.
Her statements come barely hours after doctors issued a seven-day strike notice which is expected to expire on Tuesday midnight should their demands remain unresolved.
Speaking in Kisumu, Nakhumicha termed their demands as unsustainable.
“For now that is unsustainable, as a ministry we do not have resources to post them and the law does not allow us as a ministry to post when we do not have the budget for it,” Nakhumicha said.
On Tuesday, Nakhumicha disclosed that the PS Public Health and Professional Standards Mary Muthoni was meeting with union officials to sort out the issues of contention.
But come Wednesday, the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) said issued a strike notice saying the meeting held by the PS failed to resolve the issues at hand.
"The meeting that we had yesterday (Tuesday) morning which she (CS) had said we are going to solve this, the ministry said the same thing, that their hands are tied so we hope that this notice will untie their hands," KMPDU SG Dennis Miskellah said.
Miskellah said the strike has been necessitated by issues the unions feel have not been managed properly by the leadership in the health sector.
"We went to the ministry, and sadly nothing meaningful came out of that meeting. The PS said that either the interns wait for July or accept to work without a salary or wait as they plead with the Treasury," Miskellah said.
One of the issues is the perennial delay in posting and payment of interns which the ministry said was trying to find a lasting solution once and for all since it has been a problem which has lingered on for a long time.
Apart from the issue of posting interns, the doctors also want a refund of the deducted housing levy after it was declared unconstitutional by the court.
They also want recurrent salary delays and failure to remit statutory deductions and repayment of loans resolved once and for all.
Failure by the counties and the national government to provide comprehensive medical insurance coverage to the Union members is another issue to be handled in the ultimatum.
