Healthcare workers to Ruto: Please employ us, we are not Azimio loyalists
Public health officer Isaac Omwenga addressing journalists in Nairobi on February 12, 2023.
More than 500 healthcare graduates who were last year shortlisted for employment by the Public Service Commission (PSC) have written to President William Ruto in an effort to get the jobs.
In their letter dated February 20 and copied to the PSC, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, Chief Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and the Health CS Susan Nakhumicha, the graduates are seeking to be issued with appointment letters.
"Kindly Sir, you know securing a chance through PSC in this country is a nightmare, but we were lucky ... unfortunately, someone has been sitting on our appointment letters since 2021," they said in the letter.
The 514 graduates have now formed a lobby group to push for employment letters.They have picked Bernard Asiago, Kiplang’at Maruka, Phillip Mulama and Tony Kilichu as their officials, to engage the government on their plight.
They claimed that there is a political plot being hatched to replace them with another list of 'politically correct' job seekers.
Being a government that is perceived to be undoing most of its predecessor's programmes, the health workers now say they are fearful that they may have been branded Azimio loyalists whose employment was meant to be a political reward.
"We are genuine professionals who had gone through competitive recruitment by the PSC and sailed through. It only remained being issued with appointment letters. But a change of guard in government appears to have branded us politically incorrect," says their letter.
The jobs were advertised in December 2021 in a call out marked V/No 69 to 80 of 2021.
National pool
"We were picked from a national pool of applicants...It is really sad that we have not been posted even after we have several times reminded the government about our case," their letter reads.
They said they had come to a conclusion that "it is now justifiable to invoke your authority as Head of State since the Ministry of Health is not actively discharging it's duty of pushing our case at the PSC", the letter says.
They said they had tried resolving their problem via the various channels at their disposal but after hitting a dead end, "we now reach out to you as our President for intervention".
In their letter, they said: "It is raw psychological torture to raise the hopes of the jobless with job offers, only to go silent on them even when they seek to have the matter fulfilled.”
They reminded the President that they are among the millions of jobless Kenyans who are looking up to him for guidance.
"We have already lost a colleague to depression in this wait. Many more are now depressed and their dreams slowly fading ... We need renewed hope and sense of purpose," they wrote.
They said that it was sad that patients continue to die in hospital queues waiting for medical services "when we are waiting to serve as per appointed but not posted".
