Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacist and Dentists Union (KMPDU) has threatened legal action over non-payment of medical-lecturers’ allowances.
Union secretary general Ouma Oluga accused public universities of failing to pay lecturers who are doctors their allowances for a year.
“The allowances were agreed to be paid effective January 1, last year, to all doctors but a year after the signing of the return-to-work formula and registration of CBA, no payment has been done yet,” he said.
Last year, the medical sector was paralysed for 100 days after doctors went on strike. Oluga said more than 600 medical doctors, pharmacists and dentists across all public universities are yet to have their salaries adjusted as per the CBA.
He added that many engagements with the universities, the ministries of Education and Health has yielded no fruit. He warned that, if the stalemate is not resolved by January 31, they would call for industrial action paralysing operations in all referral and teaching hospitals across the country.
“KMPDU is issuing a stern warning to all public universities with medical schools, colleges of Health Sciences and the department of Higher Education that any further discrimination of the doctors, legal action or strike will not be inevitable,” he added.
The more than 600 doctors double up as the specialists at the Kenyatta National Hospital, Moi Teaching and Referral, Kiambu, Coast, Nakuru Level Five and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga referral hospitals.
