The Kenya Medical Practitioners (KMPDU) Nyanza branch has issued a warning that its members may engage in industrial action if the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRCproposal )'s to reduce a doctor's non-practice stipend is accepted.
Dr Aggrey Orwenyo, secretary general of the KMPDU Nyanza branch, compared the idea to the government daring physicians to put down their tools in a statement to newsrooms on Wednesday.
Dr Orwenyo said, "This government direction, through the SRC to county governments, was unambiguous and adequate strike notice on our behalf to the same governments to withdraw the services from all the public hospitals.
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"Doctors will immediately and without further notification discontinue their services should the directive be implemented in our payslips."
According to Dr Orwenyo, the government was using the idea as a pretext to penalize doctors before the upcoming CBA negotiations for 2021–2025. (CBA).
The union leader said, "We view this to be a strategy by the government not to fully commit itself in the negotiations with relation to the doctors 2021–2025 CBA."
In the long term, patients would suffer from careless directions, for which essential players like our union were not consulted, according to the statement.
The comments are in line with those of Dr Davji Atellah, national secretary general of the KMPDU, who previously denounced the proposal, calling it "retrogressive" and intended to "unilaterally deprive the doctors their contractual incomes and salary by a non-consultative manner."
The union, led by Dr Atellah, has since re-filed a lawsuit against SRC, asserting that the non-practice allowance is there to make up for the income that doctors in the public sector forgo to be on par with those in the private sector.
He asserts that the non-practice allowance is under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), signed on June 30, 2017, between the union and the government through the Ministry of Health.
