By Elizabeth Walela
Nurses in Bungoma County have officially began the strike after a 21-day strike notice that they issued to the department of health and sanitation.
The County branch Nurses Secretary General David wamalwa outlined some of the issues which the department is supposed to implement for the betterment of their work.
He stated that the department has refused to engage the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), failure to promote nurses as promised, failure to re-designate specialized nurses while utilizing their expertise.
He also pointed out that they have failed to procure comprehension health insurance cover for nurses, delayed remittance of statutory deductions , failure to implement new salary and Renumeration Commission (SRC), acute shortage of nurses,, failure to convert Universal Health Coverage nurses to permanent and pensionable.
“They have also failed to implement the National Registered CBA for seconded nurses and failure to implement a 17-tier grading structure,” he said.
He stressed that the department has not yet taken into consideration on any of the ten issues he had outlined and that is why they have opted to get themselves out of the hospital for it to take action over the same.
“We have been complaining again and again over these issues since 2022 but the county government has taken non of them into consideration, while our nurses are struggling with the work with no motivation, no morale to work because some have stayed in a single position for over eight years, others working without any salary for the last six months,” he said.
He added, “We need our rights as nurses be taken into consideration and on time,”.
Wamalwa further addressed the issue of allocation of funds to buy medicine for the health facilities because the funds that the ministry allocates is less and therefore cannot be used for a month at the.hospital leading to an earlier shortage.
“Our nurses are forced to convince patients to go and buy medicine from the chemists outside the hospital due to the shortage of medicine in the hospital pharmacy,”
“Nurses especially those working at the Bungoma County Referral Hospital are under pressure handling so many patients in a single day because they are very few and taking care of patients who are at level 5, is straneous and so the county government should consider employing more workers to add to the current 180 workers to around 500,” said wamalwa.
Despite several attempts by the branch officials to have the issues resolved, their predicaments have remained unanswered, ignored and unyielding results and that’s why they have opted to stay at home untill the ministry of health reacts.
Mercy Akiza,one of the admitted patients has pleaded with the county government to meet the desires of the nurses so that they go back to work as they are the immediate people taking care of them.
“We are currently facing tough times because there are no nurses to check on our children, I have witnessed about seven children dying from the hospital beds since I was admitted and even those who were not sick have developed symptoms because of the current environment that is poor,no cleaners around, no food and so we are forced to go and buy food out which is costly,” she said.
Adding that the government should help them in making sure that SHA is active and effective because the bills that people are given on discharge shows that the SHA cover did not cater for anything.
