Kenya’s four referral hospitals on Wednesday dismissed the initial batch of striking doctors as the government made good its threat to send home medics who failed to report to work. The Ministerial Human Resource Management Advisory Committee (MHRMAC) authorised Health secretary Cleopa Mailu to dismiss any striking doctors seconded to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital-Eldoret, Mathari Hospital and the National Spinal Injury Hospital.
The directive followed a three-hour morning meeting with Dr Mailu at Afya House that arrived at the sacking resolution.
MHRMAC is the committee mandated to recommend the sacking of government health workers to the officer in charge. Doctors have been on strike since December 5, pushing poor households into prolonged pain, agony and even death.
By the time we went to press, 12 medical officers employed by KNH had received dismissal letters for defying a directive not to participate in the strike.
“The hospital has terminated the services of 12 medical officers who have been absent from duty on account of desertion in line with Employment Act 2007 Section 44 (4a) and the hospital’s terms and conditions. KNH board directly employs all doctors working in the country’s biggest referral hospital. The gap left by the sacked medical officers will be filled through a fresh recruitment process,’’ Lily Koros, the hospital’s chief executive, announced at a Press briefing in the hospital grounds.
At the end of December 2016, KNH had 264 doctors on its payroll. The hospital’s management had last November issued a memo advising the doctors against taking part in the industrial action, arguing that there was no dispute between KNH doctors and management.
Some 60 doctors, however, defied the directive, 12 of whom have now been sacked.
The remaining 204 have been partially providing services during the strike period. “KNH management is now escalating the disciplinary processes to have 48 other cases determined expeditiously to the full extent provided by law,” said Mrs Koros.
The Council of Governors, which employs 80 per cent of doctors, concurrently ordered counties to issue sacking letters to doctors still participating in what the court declared an illegal strike.
Meanwhile, Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) secretary-general Ouma Oluga urged their members (about 5,500) to remain united in order to protect the union from government assault.
The union insisted that the doctors would not resume work after a government order on Tuesday and would wait for conclusion of a court-supervised resolution of the dispute.
“While all doctors have been ready to resume duty, doing so under threats, intimidation and show of disrespect is tantamount to career suicide,” Dr Oluga said on Twitter.
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday accused the doctors of concentrating on private practice and only serving public hospitals for about two hours a day.
“It is unfair that the doctors still operate private practice yet expect us to pay them more. This is blackmail and we are not going to entertain it,” Mr Kenyatta said at the opening of the Fourth Devolution Conference in Naivasha, Nakuru County.
The doctors are demanding registration and full implementation of a June 2013 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) before they resume work.
Besides a 300 per cent pay increase, the CBA has clauses that are meant to review doctors’ working conditions and address under-staffing in public hospitals, among other demands.
Mr Kenyatta affirmed the government’s commitment to a fair resolution of the impasse even as he impressed upon the striking doctors to remember their call to duty.
“There has to be fairness from the doctors too. They need to be guided by patience and practicality,” he said before he announced the withdrawal of the enhanced package his government had offered the medics.
The enhanced offer came with a 50 per cent pay rise among other benefits.
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