Kirinyaga announces plan to promote health workers to ward off strike

Kirinyaga County Chief Officer for Medical Services, Public Health and Sanitation, Dr Muriithi Nyaga speaking at the Kerugoya County Referral Hospital on Tuesday. [Courtesy, GPS]

Kirinyaga County has announced a plan aimed at addressing all labour issues raised by health workers.

The county on Tuesday said the plan includes a budget that will facilitate promotions for the health workers in a move to avoid a strike that will affect service delivery.

Speaking at the Kerugoya County Referral Hospital, Chief Officer for Medical Services, Public Health and Sanitation, Dr Muriithi Nyaga, said the budget proposal for the promotion and re-designations has already been forwarded to the County Assembly for approval.

Muriithi further dispelled the fear of interruption of services due to a planned work slowdown by a section of the health workers.

“The County Government of Kirinyaga has noted the intended go-slow by a section of health workers. It wishes to address the concerns raised, while assuring the public that health service delivery across the county will remain uninterrupted,” Muriithi said.

He said the county has already onboarded 237 casual employees into the integrated county payroll system, issued personal numbers, and their salary arrears have been paid in full.

According to him, some 138 casuals are at different stages of verification for issuance of personal numbers.

He regretted the delay in payment of salaries for the casuals due to the long process of getting them into the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) and errors contained in the identification documents submitted by some of the workers.

“The County deeply values the contributions of healthcare workers and remains committed to constructive engagement to address workplace concerns. Such engagement must follow due process and utilise legally recognised representative structures,” he reiterated.

Muriithi said the exercise to streamline the management of casual wages has been ongoing for the last three months.

“In line with a national directive to streamline the County Government has initiated the process of onboarding casual workers into the integrated county payroll system, which has now replaced the manual payment of wages,” he added.

The Chief Officer said all public medical facilities within the county have adequate supplies of medical supplies to support effective service delivery.

“In April, the County Government placed a major order for medicines and medical supplies through KEMSA, supplemented by procurement from local suppliers for items unavailable through KEMSA. As a result, public health facilities across the county are currently well stocked with essential medicines and supplies,” said Muriithi. 

His sentiments were echoed by County Assembly Health Committee Chairman Bosco Gichangi, who asked a section of politicians to stop politicising and inciting health workers against their employer.

Gichangi said the issue of promoting health workers was in the final stage of being resolved, with the committee already having received budget proposals from the executive.

“I can confirm that we received the budget proposal from the executive two weeks ago and we are in the process of looking at it before it is tabled for approval by the whole house,” he said.