The Ministry of Health on Wednesday, March 8, convened a meeting with doctors’ representatives in the country amid a looming nationwide strike by the medics following the lapse of a 60-day notice.
The meeting brought together leaders from the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), representatives of the Central Trade Union (COTU) and the government.
In the meeting, the state agreed to consider the payment of arrears owed to doctors due to the non-implementation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) basic salary structure.
Doctors presented a tally of the lumpsum amount of basic salary arrears to the government comprising figures of unpaid salaries to doctors.
"The multi-agency team presented a computation of the lumpsum amount of basic salary arrears owed to all doctors due to non-implementation of the CBA basic salary structure, with the major beneficiaries being doctors who were at job group M, N, S and R as at 2017," a statement from KMPDU read in part.
In addition, the government agreed to expedite the posting of 300 Interns who were due to be posted in January and committed to further ensuring their timely recruitment of interns in the future.
The government also gave in to the demands of doctors to have the state fund post-graduate studies by doctors.
To this end, the Ministry of Health and the Council of Governors agreed to immediately set up a CBA negotiating team and give a verdict on the demands laid by the doctors.
All stakeholders agreed to convene another meeting on March 29 in which their respective resolutions will be tabled.
If they reach a consensus, consent will be signed in court in line with an earlier ruling that ordered the government to pay all arrears owed to doctors.
The development came two months after the government reached out to doctors with an intervention that averted a planned strike.
CS Nakhumicha promised to address the demands of the doctors with urgency to resolve the long-standing stalemate between medics and the government within 60 days.
