Doctors in the country have threatened to name and shame health facilities, both private and public that are exploiting colleagues from other countries, and by extension local professionals.
Through the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists Dentists Union (KMPDU), the doctors are accusing some health facilities, singling out private hospitals of breaching various legal frameworks, especially contractual labour laws.
To strengthen this position, KMPDU is on a comprehensive, nationwide enforcement campaign to ensure 100 percent compliance by both public and private health facilities.
Subsequently, the Union’s top leadership has warned that it will no longer tolerate the systematic undercutting of professional fees and labour standards in the name of profit.
“Every doctor practicing on Kenyan soil – local or foreign – must be employed under dignified, transparent, and lawful contractual terms. We demand immediate alignment with existing labour laws, Collective Bargaining Agreements- CBAs; Salaries Remuneration Commission- SRC guidelines, and professional standards,” KMPDU Secretary General, Dr. Davji Atellah told The People Tribune.
The medics are annoyed that health facilities, especially the private hospitals in the country, and to some extent some public hospitals are ignoring a directive to pay doctors under the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC) in the Medical and Dental Professional Fees Rules, 2016.
The professional fees rules paved the way for the minimum and maximum institutional locum fees per hour to enable general practitioners earn a minimum of Sh2, 000 to Sh5, 000 during the day, and Sh3, 000 to Sh6, 000 for nighttime services.
Under this arrangement, specialists are supposed to be paid an institutional Locum Fees of Sh3, 000 per hour as minimum and Sh6, 000 maximum during the day, with an improved pay of a minimum of Sh4, 500 to Sh9, 000 for night services. The rates, according to the regulator, KMPDC, are part of a comprehensive document covering various medical and dental procedures and consultations.
However, the Union is complaining that most of the health facilities are paying doctors rates that were being used 10 years ago, instead of doubling them as per the rules.
Dr. Atellah claimed that private hospitals were paying about Sh250 to Sh300 per hour for the doctors that they brought to the country. He described it as a form of slavery through exploitation, which contravenes the existing international labor laws that govern the practice across the world.
“This kind of exploitation is seen in those doctors who are in many hospitals, including the nurses, who are earning barely Sh50,000 and at most Sh60,000.
“So, it is an absolute exploitation,” he said, drawing attention to the contents of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the government, which forms the basis of the negotiation. “It is the benchmark to which all the private hospitals got to follow before they employ.”
The Union has recently issued a letter to all private and public health facilities in Kenya, demanding that they comply with the mandatory locum rates and professional fees stipulated in the Medical Practitioners and Dentists (Professional Fees) Rules, 2016.
He maintained that the Union will do a follow up in hospitals to ascertain whether the facilities are complying the fees rules.
“We are going to ensure that if a doctor is employed in any of the facilities in Kenya, they have to be paid on a regular basis,” he said, emphasizing that it’s the reason it’s called a professional study.
The doctors are not happy with many private facilities, accusing them of messing up this particular profession for breaching the locum fees rates. “When you are a doctor, it’s a profession that is governed by the ethics of the profession, and that means that if you operate in the services, you won’t be paid a particular amount of money, for instance you are not free to charge Sh100,000 for surgery; or a particular amount of money, but you are guided by the principle,” Dr. Atellah noted.
His deputy, Dr. Denis Miskellah said that most facilities; private and public, have resulted into some locums offering Sh200 per hour, while some are paying Sh300 per hour, and others as low as Sh150 per hour.
“Out of the desperation that there are so many other foreign doctors that have been brought in that will accept anything. I mean, if you look at, for example, some of them from Nigeria, were accepting Sh1,000 or Sh2,000.
“It is indignity,” he stated, pointing out that these are situation that are likely to influence malpractices on the side of professionals, where they can easily find themselves in unethical behavior in those medical facilities.
The doctors therefore, expressed their unwavering support for the recent directive by the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Aden Duale, regarding the licensing and employment of foreign health practitioners in Kenya.
“For far too long, the medical profession in Kenya has been treated as a frontier for profiteering, at the expense of human dignity, professional ethics, and lawful labour standards.
“Today, we declare unequivocally: the era of treating doctors as cheap, disposable labour is over,” said Dr. Atellah.
Over the past four years, more than 3,000 foreign general practitioners have been licensed to practice in Kenya.
However, while KMPDU recognises the value of international cooperation and skills exchange, the medics vowed to confront an uncomfortable truth that many of these practitioners are not recruited to address genuine skills gaps. “Instead, they are deliberately targeted by certain private hospitals as a vulnerable workforce to be exploited,” he added.
By paying wages far below those stipulated by the SRC and the negotiated CBAs, the doctors noted the health facilities in question had institutionalised a system that can only be described as modern-day slavery.
Dr. Miskellah termed it blatant violation of ILO Conventions C100 and C97, which guarantee equal remuneration for work of equal value and equal treatment of skilled labour across borders.
“This systemic exploitation does not only harm individual practitioners, it corrodes the very foundations of medical ethics. When hospitals prioritise profit over professional integrity, the consequences are devastating. The ethical decay witnessed in recent organ transplant scandals is not accidental; it is the inevitable outcome of institutions that disregard the dignity of their workforce,” he stated.
Subsequently, KMPDU noted that the culture of exploitation has also deeply affected Kenyan doctors, where many private facilities continue to subject local practitioners to demeaning locum rates that blatantly contravene KMPDC guidelines.
“We remind all employers that established day and night locum rates are binding professional standards, not optional suggestions,” he said, and emphasized that facilities that fail to comply should prepare to face the full weight of KMPDU’s industrial and legal collective action.
