Government funding health workers to strike, Governor Peter Munya claims

NAIROBI: Council of Governors (CoG) Chairman Peter Munya has claimed there is a deliberate scheme by the national government to frustrate the management of the Health services docket by county governments.

The Meru governor Sunday said the paralysis being witnessed in some health facilities is part of the grand scheme to portray counties as having failed in managing the devolved function to push their case for returning of the docket to the national government.

Munya also slammed Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia for accusing counties of failing to deal with the health sector, telling him to concentrate on his policy duties and to stop acting as the prefect of counties on how to run their health facilities.

“We are fed up with that condescending attitude. The CS needs to know that he is not a supervisor of counties to prefect how they are running their health dockets. We do not need his opinion or advice,” said Munya, adding: “Let him concentrate on improving Kenyatta National Hospital, which is in a pathetic state yet it is under the national government, and Moi Teaching Referral Hospital. Those are the only facilities he should be concerned with.”

INSTIGATE STRIKES

Munya, who was speaking after attending a church service at the Methodist Church in Ruaraka, Nairobi yesterday, claimed the national government was funding health workers’ unions to instigate strikes and portray counties as unable to handle the docket. “We are reliably told these strikes are instigated by the national government. We know there is a rethinking within some quarters over the devolving of health but we want to tell those thinking that they can revert that to a national function that it is too late,” said the governor.

Munya accused the national government of frustrating the devolution of the health docket, saying despite the Constitution giving the function to counties, the Ministry of Health was still holding some Sh200 billion meant to have gone to counties.

“Health is a fully devolved function. We still wonder why they keep this money. It is this money that they are using to fund unions to instigate these strikes,” Munya said.

He also dismissed calls by health workers’ unions for the establishment of a national commission or board similar to the Teachers Service Commission to handle issues of health workers. Munya said the calls were an impossibility, adding a national body cannot deal with a function that is already devolved. He insisted the health sector had greatly improved since the transfer of the function to counties.