Mombasa County health workers have begun a strike to pressure the county government for their January and February salary arrears. The strike follows a seven-day notice which expired on Sunday midnight.
Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), Kenya National Union of Nurses (KNUN), Kenya National Union of Medical Laboratory Officers (KNUMLO), Kenya Health Professionals Society (KHPS), Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (KUCO) and Kenya National Union of Pharmaceutical Technologists (KNUPT), among other health workers, said there would be no services until the county paid their two-month salaries and in full.
KMPDU Coast branch chairman Ahmad Hassan Mkuche said the county government had yesterday called on the officials and offered to pay the medics their gross salary of January and deductions up to November, but the medics declined the offer.
The medics declared they would not accept anything short of their two-month salaries plus deductions in full.
“Our salary deductions have not been paid for the past five months; the county last paid us in October 2021. We are really struggling even in getting to work,” he said.
The strike is the result of the county’s failure to honour a memorandum of understanding signed by the two parties in January, this year.
Patients at Mombasa’s Coast General Hospital were turned away yesterday.
Coast General Hospital has a capacity of 700 beds and serves over 1,000 inpatients and outpatients daily.
It is also the only major facility that provides specialised care such as oncology, renal services and cardiology.
This is the second strike by health workers in Mombasa since the beginning of the year over salary delays and non-remittance of statutory deductions and loan repayments.
Patients were not permitted to enter the hospital’s main entrance, which serves all six counties in the Coast region.
