Learning has been interrupted at the Moi University’s School of Medicine after lecturers went on strike over unpaid clinical allowances.
The lecturers said on Monday that they had issued a strike notice on June 6 to the university’s Vice Chancellor Isaac Kosgey and the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) Chief Executive Officer Wilson Aruasa threatening to down their tools for the delayed payment of the allowances.
“We officially started the strike today. We have stopped giving our services at the Moi University College of Health Sciences. We issued a one-week notice to both the university vice chancellor and MTRH CEO before we downed our tools,” Dr Ishmael Aiyabei, the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union branch secretary told the Nation by phone on Monday.
NO COMMITMENT
According to Dr Aiyabei, the university failed to show any commitment in ensuring the payment of the outstanding enhanced clinical allowances, backdated to January 1, 2017, in the June 2019 salaries.
“After the 100 days doctors’ strike back in 2017, all doctors were [awarded] enhanced clinical allowances. But since then the doctors in universities have not been paid. We have been patient enough. But we have realised that Moi University has no commitment to pay us even after issuing them with the strike notice,” said Dr Aiyabei
In a letter addressed to the Moi University VC and MTRH CEO, the lecturers indicated that all duty rotas, timetables and examinations had been suspended until further notice for all the medical lecturers, registrars and students.
Efforts by the Nation to get the university to comment on the matter were not successful.