When nurses bowed to pressure from the national and county governments and called off their countrywide strike, in remains to be seen if their 2017 CBA based negotiations will bear any fruits.
Announcing the truce, the Kenya National Union of Nurses secretary general Seth Panyako directed the nurses to report to work immediately in compliance with a court order suspending the strike for 60 days to allow negotiations.
He urged the medics to respect the order and await the conclusion of the negotiations.
“There is no way we could serve the counties with a court order that was non-existent. I received the order on Thursday and I have sent it to the striking counties to call off the strike. We are the greatest consumers of the court in Kenya and therefore it will be foolhardy for us to imagine that we can fight the court. We cannot fight the Judiciary when it has stood with us. We must respect the rule of law” he said.
The order requires that all nurses report to their working stations by Friday to avoid contempt of court proceedings.
Nurses had been under pressure to call off the strike with President Uhuru Kenyatta last week warning that punitive action would be taken against those who failed to resume work.
And in a letter released on Wednesday, the Interior ministry directed all county commissioners to submit daily reports of nurses who had reported to work in their areas.
“The report must include names of facilities affected, the number of nurses participating in the strike and actions taken by your office to ensure that delivery of services to patients at all health facilities in your areas is not interrupted. The ministry should receive reports daily latest 2:00pm,” said the letter signed by Nairobi Regional Commissioner William Kang’ethe Thuku for the Principal Secretary.