City Hall employees call off strike
Employees of the Nairobi County government have called off their strike to allow for conclusion of negotiations with City Hall.
The strike which began on Tuesday has now been halted temporarily following progress in a two-day consultative meetings with officials of Governor Mike Sonko’s administration.
GRIEVANCES
The employees’ union officials have been having meetings since Monday with a resolution only being reached this morning.
Kenya County Government Workers Union (KCGWU) Nairobi branch secretary Boniface Waweru said they have agreed to call off the parade to allow for the conclusion of negotiations between the Union and City Hall.
Mr Waweru pointed out that the county government have already started addressing some of their grievances including promotions and re-designations, pining hopes on more of the issues they raised being addressed as the deliberations continue.
“The county officials have so far been able to address most of our issues apart from the unremitted statutory deductions, off days and overtime as well as remitting dues for retirees and that is why we have agreed to continue with the talks and ensure everything is sorted out,” said Mr Waweru.
The county staff had on last week issued a seven-day strike notice over stalled promotions and right placements, non- remittance of workers statutory deductions and a poor working environment.
Other complaints were re-designations, lack of remittance of retirees’ benefits and off-duty days and payment of overtime allowances, refund of tuition fees, work injury compensation, departmental structures, staff uniforms and resolution of pending disciplinary cases.
RETURN TO WORK
On his part, acting County Secretary Leboo Morintat said that they had agreed on a return-to-work formula with the workers where they will address most of their issues within a ten-day window period.
“We are committed as a county government to clearing the workers issues. We had a CBA that sought to address most issues such as stagnation of workers in one cadre for years but the courts stopped us from implementing it. We are however working on their issues,” said Mr Morintat adding that City Hall had begun deployment of promotion letters to deserving staff.
On matters promotion, the workers have accused City Hall of reneging on a planned promotion of the workers even after promising to effect the same by January 7, 2020.
Last year November, City Hall announced it had approved 2, 153 health workers including the nurses and the clinical officers for promotion as well as re-designation in a bid to avert a similar strike called for by the aggrieved workers.
On disciplinary cases, the officials fingered the Board for being an impediment to the timely resolution of disciplinary cases as meetings by the Board to clear the pending cases having stalled due to lack of quorum.