Moi referral hospital to get Sh1 billion

The government will provide an additional Sh1 billion in funding to help the cash-strapped Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Over 1,200 nurses at the facility have been on strike, paralysing operations for five days. CEO Dr Phillip Kirwa said the hospital faced cash flow hitches due to budget cuts, adding that he was grateful to the government for the additional funds.

“We will receive the money shortly to deal with the few challenges we have, including some of the demands by the nurses,” Kirwa said.

All operations, including emergency services, are going on as usual, he said. Part of the money will be used to pay third-party deductions, which was one of the reasons cited by the Kenya National Union of Nurses for the strike.

Kirwa said the issues had been resolved through negotiations, but surprisingly, at the last minute, the union officials failed to sign the agreement.

“We have engaged in genuine dialogue with the union over all the issues they have raised and we still hope they will agree with us and sign a return-to-work deal,” he said.

“As concerns promotions, we have a few cases of nurses who do not qualify yet, but all the deserving ones have already been promoted.”

The hospital offers all its workers medical cover through SHA, but it secured an extra firm to cover the nurses and other employees.

Kirwa denied claims that the nurses were being harassed and asked the union to use available channels to report any cases.

He said the hospital opted to go to court after Knun failed to sign a return to work deal without proper reasons.

Justice Maureen Onyango of the Employment and Labour Relations Court on Friday issued orders stopping the nurses’ strike.

The order followed an application filed under a certificate of urgency by MTRH management seeking the court’s intervention to end the strike.

“The respondents, its agents or any other persons are hereby restrained from causing, affecting, inciting or otherwise calling out its members to participate in a strike or withdrawing labour pending inter partes hearing of this matter,” part of the court order read.

Justice Onyango ordered that the matter be heard on April 2. The judge gave the nurses’ union seven days to file its response and cautioned against disobedience of court orders.

Union officials were yet to call off the strike following the court order. Knun secretary general Seth Panyako issued the strike notice on February 22, citing seven demands.

Their grievances included delayed promotions, lack of functional medical cover for the nurses, failure to implement SRC salary adjustments, understaffing and harassment of nursing staff.

The nurses are also complaining over delayed remittance of statutory deductions, rotational change in the nursing department, stagnation in leadership and discrimination of staff in private wings of the hospital.