The persistent pressure for the implementation of the 2017 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) has forced the government to reverse its plan to cut salaries for intern doctors, averting a strike.

The government will allocate Sh1.3 billion to pay interns’ in salary arrears, with a total of Sh3.1 billion required to fund the 12-month internship programme.

The Sh1.3 billion covers salary arrears owed to at least 1,270 doctors whose pay had been reduced from Sh206,000 to between Sh40,000 and Sh70,000, based on advice from the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC).

Under the agreement, each intern doctor will now receive a monthly salary of Sh206,000, including updated arrears. The deal, reached last week, was signed by Deputy President Prof Kithure Kindiki and representatives from the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU).

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The payments will be backdated to August 2024, when the interns were posted by the government.

In the strike notice, doctors had demanded payment of interns salaries at the CBA rates, payment of doctor’s basic salary arrears accrued since 2017, and full implementation of the May Return to Work formula.

“I am pleased to inform the nation that after intense engagement with the government under the leadership of Deputy President Prof Kindiki Kithure, last evening, we signed a deal,” KMPDU Secretary General Dr Davji Atellah said during signing of the agreement.

He added, “In the agreement, we saw evidence of the interns’ payslips being prepared at the salary rate of Sh206,000, as per the CBA, and their arrears will be paid from August 2024, when they started working. All interns who have been on duty since November 26, 2024, to report to work...”

KMPDU Deputy Secretary General Dr Dennis Miskella attributed the challenge in handling the interns’ issue to the “failure by the government to budget properly.”

“The ministry delayed to budget for the interns, and Susan Nakhumicha (the former Health Cabinet Secretary) said the little money available was to be shared among everyone. This is why we sued the government in court, and the court ruled that the CBA was valid and that they (government) needed to align with the CBA,” Miskella told The Standard in an interview.

Poor budgeting

Initially, the government had maintained that it could only afford to post intern doctors according to the new SRC circular of March 2024, at an all-inclusive gross pay of Sh70,000.

Even with the pay cut, the intern doctors had not received their four months’ pay, an issue that contributed to issuance of strike notice by the doctors union.

According to the union official, the failure to pay intern doctors affected their operations in their respective postings, with some allegedly having died by suicide due to financial strain.

The suffering of the doctors, he said, led to the strike, and a second strike notice was issued after the initial 56-day one. “Intern doctors have been suffering, and some have even taken their own lives because of financial strain. This is why we went on strike and issued another strike notice to push for the pay,” he added.

The intern issue was among the demands of doctors who downed their tools in March this year, a strike that lasted for 56 days.