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{
"id": 1108467,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1108467/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Ali",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, when you look at this, you will see that Kenyans do not have enough health personnel who work in the rural counties. That is why in the cities or big towns, that is where everybody is, for example, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru counties. If you go to Laikipia County, you will just find them in Nanyuki Town, but in all the other places people are suffering. During my service in the Committee on Health, I have confirmed that some counties use up to 50 per cent of their revenue to finance recurrent expenditure in respect to human resource for health. When you use 50 per cent of your resources for staff, what happens to the other things you require? You will not have enough vehicles, drugs, facilities or infrastructure and you have to travel from the headquarters to go to the rural areas. If you have to travel from Wajir Town to a place called Godoba, it is over 300 kilometres away. How will people work? How are these people going to help the people of these counties? Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, despite the investment, there is still a shortage of human resources for health, which has resulted in poor working conditions for health workers in the country. To date, human resource for health continues to face challenges of harassment, ethnic profiling, hostile working conditions, health workers shortages, stalled promotions, and failure or refusal to absorb health workers yearly, resulting in severe shortages. There is inability for horizontal or vertical career progression, including inability for inter county or intergovernmental transfers. As a result of these gaps in the management of human resource for health, the health workers in this country have continued to seek redress and continually agitated for the establishment of the Health Service Commission with full and independent executive functions and powers. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, you know this well because you have been in the Committee before. Whenever we call doctors or nurses when they are on strike, they will always say that we want to have the Health Service Commission for health workers. It is unfortunate that in the 2010 Constitution, they did not properly participate and were not able to get it. On hindsight now, they have realised what the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) did. The KNUT insisted that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) must be there and they must have their own commission. That is why they survived even if of late they are not doing very well. However, when you have the Health Service Commission for health workers, then things would have worked out well. Unfortunately, it did not happen. Even when they gave their presentation to the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) secretariat, the Bill that was brought to the House did not contain anything to do with the Health Service Commission. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as a result, we have realised that the stakeholders submitted their views to this Bill. Every time you call the stakeholders, they always comment and talk about the Health Service Commission. It appears that the establishment of the commission will offend the functional constitutional integrity of county governments. The same may only be achieved through an amendment to the Constitution. Since we are not able to do that, we however think that this Bill will help county governments."
}