Feb, 19th 2021 – Health services in Mombasa County have been restored after more than 1000 health workers including nurses, clinical officers, and laboratory technicians, called off their three months strike. This is following an agreement between the employees and the county government.
The county government has assured the locals of normalizing the aversion of health crises by negotiating with the workforce in advance.
The Mombasa Branch, Kenya Union of Clinical Officers Secretary-General, Franklin Makanga says that the health workers will resume duty from tomorrow.
Speaking at the same time, the Kenya National Union of Nurses Mombasa branch, Secretary General Peter Maroko promised to always seek dialogues instead of industrial action.
He said, “It was not our wish to go in this direction (strike). We want to appeal to the Mombasa County government to always allow us to resolve issues amicably.“
“We should be given priority and our issues resolved well. After agreeing with the Mombasa County, we hereby call off the strike and ask our members to go back to work,” he added.
Speaking at the Governor’s office in Mombasa during a press, acting county Secretary Joab Tumbo and acting health executive Dr. Godffrey Nato, the services at both public hospitals and dispensaries shall resume work tomorrow.
Mr. Tumbo said, “We have had a breakthrough and resolve the key issues from our health workers who have been on strike. The issue of delayed salaries, we have endeavored to pay. We only have pending January salaries. We had a backlog of statutory deductions to settle. We have about 50 percent of that.”
“We don’t take pride in engaging strikes. The strike dented the fight against the pandemic. But we now want to move forward and focus on what’s ahead of us,” he added.
Chair of the County Service Public Board Farida Abdallah was also happy that the strike is now over saying, “We thank God that this crisis is over, it is humbling to say that after three months of back and forth, we signed a return to work formula.”
“The winner has been the citizens of Mombasa. Our doors are always open for negotiations. We hope and pray we will never get to such levels,” she added.
The doctors had earlier accused the government of failing to commit itself to fulfil the recommendations that would avert the strike.