Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1110285,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1110285/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 271,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Milgo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13174,
        "legal_name": "Milgo Alice Chepkorir",
        "slug": "milgo-alice-chepkorir"
    },
    "content": "the counties level. There is a disparity among health workers in all the 47 counties in terms of salaries, welfare and management of the entire sector. I think this Inter-Governmental Act should be amended to harmonies what is happening in the public service boards that employ staff. In fact, this has been a challenge not only for health workers, but even for other staff because of the fact that from one county to another there is a disparity. I chair the Senate Committee on Education. We have been speaking to the CoG in terms of Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) about ECDE teachers and vocational training centre trainees. We realized there is a disparity across the counties. This one becomes worse because health workers are expected to ensure they dispense health to our people. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, there is confusion when it comes to interns, transfers and specialists. There are counties who do not have a specialist at all. Transfers have been a challenge not only to health workers, but other workers employed in the counties. It is high time that we come up with a Bill that will allow workers to have intercountry transfers when vacancies arise in the various areas. I am sure this Bill will go a long way to cure the ills where we do not even know the number of health workers. I serve in the Committee on Labour and Social Welfare. We have been listening heath workers when they were on strike. We realized there was a problem even in maintaining papers. In the past where there has been a lot of strikes, we realized that there were problems even in maintaining paper. There was a disparity so that there was very scarce paper work to know who was where and where to find a specialist. This Bill will ensure that we cure this, once for all. It will even assist management when it comes to maybe transfers and remunerating. The worst one is when it comes to schemes of service. We realized that some counties have not paid health workers for months. During COVID-19 pandemic, we realized that many were exposed to many challenges. They not only lacked PPEs, but even went without salary for a long time. We witnessed the loss of a number of them. For example, a young doctor was posted to Machakos County, but he passed on due to lack of PPP attire. As a Committee, we tried to solve the issues of health workers in the counties. Without this Bill, we shall have very many meetings and we report which shall just go down in paper without addressing this problem. I am sure this Bill will serve as an important entry point to ensure we solve a few of the myriads of challenges that health workers are going through. There has been a great disconnect in the national and county governments, particularly after devolving this. My colleague, Senators, have said much of the money is still within the national Government. When you are speaking to the unions of health workers, you realize that there are separate unions for the various cadres. As a result, they are suffering. Health is a critical component; it is important to bring harmonization so that you ensure that our people will manage to access quality healthcare we want to provide."
}