National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) on Tuesday announced that it would provide amnesty to all self-employed members who had not made payments to their cards leading to their deregistration.
The National insurer posted on its social media account stating that all self-employed cardholders who had not used their NHIF card for more than a year would be deregistered.
The message was however misinterpreted with Kenyans online accusing NHIF of fraud.
[caption caption="NHIF's tweet"]
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"How then is my NHIF card de-activated for not using? Common sense, if one falls sick! That's when I get to use my card," one user posted.
Another wrote: "Do you mean you now penalize me for not getting sick for a whole year? Or is there any other way to use the NHIF card?"
This prompted NHIF to clarify what it meant by 'cards that had not been used in the past year' phrase.
"Dear beloved members. In our earlier post in the morning, it may have appeared as if we were implying cards that are not used will be deactivated. By use we meant making regular payments. We apologize for any misunderstanding caused," NHIF tweeted on Tuesday.
On further inquiry by Kenyans.co.ke, a NHIF representative clarified on how the amnesty would be applied to self- employed cardholders who had their accounts suspended.
"It means if your account has been dormant in terms of regular payments to it for one reason or the other for a period exceeding 1 year and you want to resume payments, you can take advantage of an ongoing amnesty and forego accrued penalties," the representative told Kenyans.co.ke on the phone.
She added that the deregistration of dormant accounts was initiated years ago stating that Kenyans were not aware of the process.
[caption caption="File image of the entrance to the Kenyatta National Hospital A&E Centre"]
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