Health services in Tharaka-Nithi paralysed as public workers strike

Services in most public hospitals in Tharaka-Nithi County were paralysed as a strike called by health workers began to bite.

Patients remained unattended to as health workers boycotted work after the county government delayed to pay their December 2014 salaries.

Tharaka-Nithi County Kenya National Union of Nurses secretary-general Kenneth Micheni said health workers in the county were undergoing a myriad of problems and efforts to engage the county government had borne no fruit.

“We have said that enough is enough and we will not resume duties until the county government handles us with the dignity that we deserve,” said Mr Micheni.

He said that most of the health workers have not taken their children back to school because they have no money.

“Some of our members are now borrowing money from friends so that they can take their children back to school yet we have been working for a whole month,” said Mr Micheni.

NHIF DEDUCTIONS NOT SUBMITTED

He claimed that the county government has been deducting money for the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) but they have not been remitting it making it impossible for the health workers to get medical services when they are sick.

“We are always embarrassed in hospitals when we seek for services because we are forced to pay in cash which most of the time we don’t have. This is because the government does not remit our contributions to the NHIF though they deduct it from our salaries,” he said.

Mr Micheni also warned the Salary and Remuneration Commission (SRC) not to interfere with medical workers’ allowances. SRC has announced radical changes which will see several allowances scrapped in the public service with a target of saving more than Sh125 billion which will translate to 25 per cent of the total wage bill.

Chuka General Hospital Superintendent Dr Mwiti Makathimo said some patients were now asking their relatives to transfer them to private hospitals.

Dr Makathimo urged the county and the national governments to consider allocating enough resources to health as it was a critical sector.

Nurses who asked for anonymity claimed that the hospital has no medicines and most of the patients are buying them from chemists in the town.

This comes barely a week after the Chuka/Igambang’ombe MP Muthomi Njuki urged the county government to install back electricity at Mpukoni Dispensary which has been operating for weeks without power.

Efforts to contact the county executive in-charge of health bore no fruit as calls went unanswered.