The Kenya Union of Clinical Officers has threatened to initiate the removal from office of senior officials at the Ministry of Health and the Social Health Authority for allegedly frustrating the full rollout of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
The union blamed the suffering Kenyans are enduring in the hands of the Social Health Authority on cartels allegedly deep-rooted in the Ministry of Health and SHA for personal financial gains, hence the need to take a decisive action against the top leaderships of the two entities.
KUCO National Chairman Patterson Wachira said that the union had already submitted a censure motion against SHA Chairman Dr. Abdi Mohamed and Acting Chief Executive Officer Robert Ingasira for alleged incompetence after collecting 1,000 signatures from Kenyans and that it would soon do likewise to senior ministry officials, including the Cabinet Secretary.
“I want to ask Members of Parliament, both at the National Assembly and the Senate, to help in the censure of the people heading SHA because they have denied Kenyans the right to health as stipulated under Article 43 of the Constitution of Kenya,” he told journalists.
He warned that the union would seek the removal from office of Health Cabinet Secretary Deborah Barasa, the two Principal Secretaries in the Ministry and Health Director General Dr. Patrick Amoth if they do not sort out the mess in the health sector forthwith.
He said this at a Malindi hotel Friday during the 16th Annual Ophthalmic Clinical Officers Conference.
Unionized clinical officers have been on strike for more than two weeks demanding inta alia the implementation of a return-to-work formula agreed upon last year and the empanelment of clinical officers in SHA. They said that the union would take other actions to force those in authority to listen to them.
“We have already taken a censure motion for Parliament to remove the chairman and CEO of SHA, and we have also made it clear that if the ministry, especially the Cabinet Secretary, the Principal Secretaries and the Director General do not sort this out, the next is that we are collecting signatures to ask for their impeachment,” he warned.
He stated four grounds of impeachment as discrimination against Kenyans by discriminating the clinical officers who attend to them, denying Kenyans access to health, unlawfully denying clinical officers the right to pre-authorize and offer services and contravention Chapter six, especially Article 73 of the constitution about responsibilities and principles of leadership.
“We are not saying this because we hate them. We are saying this because as Kenyans, we have a right to ensure that people in office offer services according to the law and if they don’t, it is the duty of every Kenyan to look for ways to remove them so that we get people who will be able to work well,” he said.
Wachira said SHA would be far much better than the defunct National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) had it not been infiltrated by the same cartels that brought problems with the NHIF which, he alleged, had regrouped under SHA.
He claimed that there was a lot of professional bias in favour of medical officers at the expense of clinical officers and other cadres in the health sector because top decision makers are medical officers.
Also present at the conference were the President of the Kenya Clinical Officers Association Mr. Moses Konde Matole, the Chairman of the Ophthalmic Clinical Officers Association Mr. George Ohito and the Kilifi County Eye Care Coordinator Mr. Geoffrey Anaya, among others.
By Emmanuel Masha
