More than 800 nurses in Mombasa County remain off duty as the nationwide nurses’ strike enters its second week, with union officials insisting they will not return to work until the Council of Governors (CoG) signs a long-outstanding Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
Speaking on behalf of the Kenya National Union of Nurses (KNUN), Industrial Relations Officer Peter Maroko said talks with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) and a government-appointed conciliator at the Ministry of Labour had yielded no breakthrough, with the CoG yet to table any concrete proposal to end the standoff.
“There is no level of intimidation or coercion that is going to force us to go back to work unless the CoG and SRC agree and negotiate with us collectively to reach an agreement,” Maroko said.
He noted that nurses have been pushing for a CBA since the union’s founding in 2013, and expressed frustration that other health cadres, including clinical officers and doctors, had already secured similar agreements with the national government and referral hospitals such as Kenyatta National Hospital, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, and Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital.
Apart from the CBA, the union is demanding that nurses employed under the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programme be converted to permanent and pensionable terms, and that the Career Progression Guidelines already negotiated at the Public Service Commission be implemented for nurses as they have been for clinical officers.
Maroko dismissed recent remarks attributed to the Mombasa Governor threatening to recruit replacement nurses for those on strike, saying the county already faces a severe shortage of nursing staff and would struggle to hire and pay recruits according to SRC guidelines.
“If he hires nurses and does not pay them according to SRC, he will have acted unlawfully. And if he does hire them, within days they too will be demanding permanent contracts,” he said, adding that any newly hired nurses would likely join the ongoing industrial action.
He further refuted claims that nurses had instructed patients to leave hospitals, saying such directives were never within the union’s mandate. He instead pointed out that hospital operations depend heavily on nursing staff, noting that without nurses on the wards, other health workers are unable to function effectively.
Maroko said the union remains ready to sustain the strike for as long as necessary, recalling that nurses had previously stayed off duty for over three months in 2017 without capitulating to pressure.
He called on the Mombasa Governor, in his capacity as CoG’s health committee Chairperson, to champion a resolution that would see the union’s demands addressed and services restored at public health facilities across the county.
By Ramadhan Nassib
