Home » Media Centre » Blogs » On the Health Workers & Nurses Strike
According to news reports the nurses and health workers strike has been called off following talks between the government, the Union of Kenya Civil Servants and the Health Professional Society. The talks mark an end to the two-week strike by nurses and health workers over poor working conditions and poor pay in the country’s national hospitals.
The strike saw health workers and nurses persist in their strike action despite the government’s announcement/ultimatum that it would sack the 25,000 striking nurses and health works if they failed to return to work as directed by the Minister of Medical Services, Professor Anyang’ Nyongo (I wonder if anyone really through the implications for the country’s health care if 25,000 qualified health workers and nurses were all sacked in one fell swoop). The strike also persisted despite the issuance of suspension notices to about 5,000 nurses, the suspensions that have since been withdrawn. The persistence of the health workers through government threats sends a pretty strong message about the deplorable state of public health care system.
While many Kenyans are probably breathing a sigh of relief that the country’s public health care workers and nurses have began to return to their work stations, my questions and question is, for how long? And is the government, particularly the Ministries of Public Health, Medical Services, Labour and Treasury, committed to finding long-term durable solutions to the issues within health sector both in terms of pay and working conditions? Or are the promises that the government has made to look into the concerns of health care workers a band-aid solution to get health care workers to return to work in the short-term?
After all the latest strike by healthcare workers and nurses is over the government’s failure to honour promises it made to health workers and nurses to improve remuneration and work conditions less than six months ago after their strike over exact the same issues in December last year. Furthermore this is not the first time that the government has made promises to striking civil servants only to fail in following through. A failure that often results in the repeat of the striking civil servants. Look at the case of teachers.
What are your thoughts? Is this the government committed to changing the state of the health sector and improving working conditions and pay for public sector health workers and nurses or should we expect to see more strikes in the future?
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