Council of Governors Chair Ahmed Abdullahi has urged striking nurses to return to work as negotiations continue over the implementation of a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that has remained unresolved for years.Abdullahi said the Council of Governors was willing to engage nurses on the outstanding issues, but maintained that the ongoing strike was complicating efforts to reach an agreement.The CoG chair further added that the CBA dates back to discussions held ahead of the 2017 General Election but has never been fully implemented, with the two sides now seeking to resolve the matter through negotiations.“We’ve tried to negotiate with the nurses and while negotiations were still ongoing they called a strike," he revealed.He said the Council had been engaging nurses and was hopeful that an agreement could be reached despite previous positions taken by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) on some of the demands.Abdullahi also raised concern over the continued strike despite a court ruling declaring the industrial action illegal, saying disobedience of court orders was creating additional challenges for county governments.The remarks come days after the Kenya National Union of Nurses (KNUN) gave the SRC seven days to resolve the dispute, warning that the strike could be extended to national referral hospitals if the commission failed to act.KNUN Secretary-General Seth Panyako said the union was not seeking fresh negotiations, arguing that some counties had already reached and signed CBAs with nurses and that the outstanding issue was for the SRC to issue letters of no objection required for implementation.Panyako cited counties including Marakwet, where agreements had reportedly been reached, but said nurses had remained on strike because the required approval from SRC had not been issued.Abdullahi, on the other hand, said the Council had taken a position that governors and county public service boards should handle cases of employees who continued to remain absent from work in line with established human resource procedures.He warned that this could result in disciplinary action against nurses who defied lawful directives to resume duty, although the Council would seek to address any resulting cases through established procedures.The CoG chair said the Council was prepared to continue discussions with nurses and explore a possible agreement that could then be presented jointly to SRC, rather than allowing the dispute to continue disrupting healthcare services.He urged the nurses to return to work as negotiations proceed, saying the long-running CBA dispute could be resolved through dialogue while allowing patients to continue accessing essential healthcare services.
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