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Kenya: Ministry in Bid to Avert Nurses' Strike
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The Nation (Nairobi)
5 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Walter Menya and Bob Odalo
Nairobi
Medical Services minister Anyang' Nyong'o will meet officials of the nurses union next week to work out a deal to avert the impending nurses strike.
Prof Nyong'o said nurses had raised genuine concerns that need to be addressed speedily and with seriousness to prevent a crisis at health institutions. "In this respect, I have called their leaders to my office to discuss alternatives to the planned strike," Prof Nyong'o said. Nurses have threatened to down their tools if their demands for a salary raise and improvement of working conditions are not met. They have issued a 28-day strike notice to the Government.
Healthcare
Prof Nyong'o said his ministry was looking into ways of improving facilities at various hospitals so that healthcare would be more affordable. He acknowledged that some health centres had not been developed for many years.
The minister, who was speaking during the second graduation ceremony of Great Lakes University of Kisumu, challenged universities to partner with hospitals in improving health care.
He said universities should decentralise and offer their programmes in rural areas so that the majority poor in these far-flung areas could benefit. Prof Nyong'o called on universities to introduce market-oriented programmes to benefit the rural areas. "Universities are established to serve the marginalised, but most of the public universities have turned their focus to the elite of society," he said.
Salaries
Elsewhere, a group of nurses who were contracted to work for the Government through the Clinton Foundation have appealed to the minister to intervene so that the Government pays them their outstanding dues.
Most of the nurses were hired by the Government and posted to remote areas during the 2003 nurses' strike. Their services were terminated when the strike ended. The foundation stepped in and had them hired on contract basis. The foundation is said to have provided the Government with funds for the nurses' pay.
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But yesterday the nurses complained that they were only paid for six months before payment stopped.
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