Pick your letters or we declare the posts vacant, Kisumu doctors told
By Dickson Odhiambo
December 23, 2019.
Pick your letters or we declare the posts vacant, Kisumu doctors told
The County Government of Kisumu has given the striking
Doctors working in public hospitals in the county until today to pick their
letters of promotions failure to which the posts will be declared vacant.
County Executive Committee Member in charge of Health Prof
Judith Miguda Atyang says the letters for promotion of doctors in Kisumu
County’s public health facilities are ready since one and half weeks ago.
Addressing the press in Kisumu today, the CEC in charge of
health said the promotion of doctors to their correct job groups was the
pending issue and has currently been effected with individual letters of
promotion being drawn up by the county Public Service Board.
“The implementation of the Doctors’ promotions was discussed
and agreed with their union to be effected by December owing to the budgetary
processes involved. This was achieved last week when the cabinet approved that
appropriation and communication conveyed to the Public Service Board and the
Union. The letters are now here with us one and half week later,” Prof Atyang
says in a press statement.
The CEC says if the medics fail to pick the letters, then
they will have no any other option other than to declare their positions as
vacant.
“If they don’t pick the letters by when we have asked them
to do so then we shall consider those positions as vacant,” she says.
She says the Doctors have until the end of today to pick the
letters failure to which the positions will be declared vacant.
Atyang wonders why the Doctors’ Union has termed the letters
as ‘love letters’ yet the doctors have not picked them.
“Let them pick those letters and point out the love affairs
in them then we can discuss the love affairs in them because we are ready for
discussions,” she adds.
The striking Kisumu Doctors last week vowed to continue with
the strike until the county Government fully implement the Collective
Bargaining Agreement which was signed in June this year.
The Doctors through their Kenya Medical Practitioners,
Pharmacies and Dentists Union {KMPDU} claimed that the content in those letters
are not what they agreed on in the CBA.
Led by the Chairman of the Kenya Medical Practitioners,
Pharmacists and Dentists Union {KMPDU} Nyanza Regional Branch Dr. Kevin Osuri,
the medics have said unless the County Government of Kisumu honor the Agreement
they won’t step in their places of work.
Addressing the press at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and
Referral Hospital in Kisumu last week on Friday, the doctors vowed that their
ongoing strike will continue until they get what they deserve as professions.
“We want the county Government of Kisumu to implement the
Return to work Agreement we signed on June 24, 2019, failure to which we won’t
go back to work,” they say.
Dr. Osuri says the current letter purported to have been
written by the Department of Health in Kisumu County does not contain what they
had earlier agreed on in June this year, adding that it looks like a ‘Love
letter’.
A letter purported to have been written by the Kisumu County
Public Service Board through has instructed the doctors to go and collect their
promotion letters.
“We are ready to go back to work immediately the County
Government of Kisumu stick to its words by honoring the return to Work
Agreement,” Osuri says.
The medics have urged patients seeking health services in
public hospitals in Kisumu County to instead do so in neighboring counties of
Kakamega, Kisii or any other county that values the welfare of their doctors.
ENDS:
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