Badi orders promotion of health personnel in two weeks

By COLLINS OMULO
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Summary

• All health workers in Nairobi County due to advance to higher grades will be promoted by the end of this month, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has announced.
• It comes after the health care workers’ union blamed the NMS for failing to promote contracted medical staff even though 538 million shillings have been earmarked for the exercise.
• Kenya Nurses Union Nairobi branch secretary Boaz Onchari said some 1,600 health care workers had been on probation for more than 12 years.

All health workers in Nairobi County due to advance to higher grades will be promoted by the end of this month, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has announced.

NMS chief executive Mohamed Badi has instructed finance and human resources directors to promote all 1,600 employees within two weeks.

“All due promotions will be made within the next two weeks. Some staff have gone more than 10 years without promotion. For me, it’s totally inhumane,” Lt. Gen. Badi said.

It comes after the health care workers’ union blamed the NMS for failing to promote contracted medical staff even though 538 million shillings have been earmarked for the exercise.

Nairobi branch secretary of the Kenya Nurses Union, Boaz Onchari, said some 1,600 health care workers have been on probation for more than 12 years and have not yet been absorbed despite the return of the budget allocated by the NMS.

The situation, he says, is behind the perennial strikes in the capital’s health sector.

“Our sector has seen the most strikes because our problems have not been resolved. Many of the staff employed in 2010 have been on probation for 12 years,” Mr. Onchari said.

“Are they supposed to spend their entire working life on probation where they can’t even get a loan with a pay stub that shows they’re not permanent employees?” he posed.

The secretary of the Clinical Workers Union branch in Nairobi, Tom Nyakaba, said only doctors are promoted, but lower-level employees such as nurses and clinical officers can also do the job.

“It’s long-standing discrimination. You don’t have to take a surgeon out of theater and make them medical superintendents to do administrative work, but the theater is where you need them the most.

“Qualified staff in other cadres should also benefit from such opportunities,” Mr. Nyakaba said.

The union official called for the formation of a works council where the county government and union officials sit regularly to settle labor issues to prevent frequent labor disputes in Nairobi.

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