The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) Vihiga branch has described as discrimination a decision made by the Social Health Authority (SHA) to deny its members services despite teachers having Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) contributions deducted from their pay slips.
Speaking to Education News yesterday, KUPPET Vihiga Executive Secretary Sabala Inyeni noted that it was shocking when the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Nancy Macharia, revealed to MPs that the proposal to have teachers on its payroll given comprehensive medical cover under SHA was declined.
Sabala averred that for a long period of time, teachers’ medical needs have been a thorn in the flesh, with union officials complaining about the manner in which the teachers’ medical cover is being handled, adding that teachers are fed up with these bottlenecks.
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“Teachers get stranded in the hospital on a daily basis. For any treatment to occur, teachers have to keep calling Minet for them to unlock the system at every stage of treatment. Is this the way all other insurance schemes operate? We even asked TSC to consolidate these two covers into one and give us comprehensive medical coverage like that of civil servants. Now we are shocked to learn that SHA doesn’t have the capacity to cover 400,000 teachers and their dependants,” wondered Sabala.
“This sounds crazy considering that the same SHA is deducting huge sums of money from our members monthly. So why did they include us in that scheme when they knew that they don’t even have the capacity to onboard us? Is there any justifiable reason why teachers should not demand a refund of their money paid into SHA so far? Interestingly, president Ruto himself is on record encouraging all Kenyans to register under SHA. If you can’t cover 400,000 teachers and their dependants, how will you cover over 50 million Kenyans? Who is fooling who?” he added.
While appearing before the National Assembly Education Committee chaired by Tinderet MP Julius Melly, Dr. Macharia revealed that SHA declined to enroll over 360,000 teachers due to a lack of nationwide infrastructure, adding that the Commission has always wished to enroll teachers into a public insurance scheme, but this has not been possible so far.
“Last year, when we had issues with Minet portal, we wanted to move our teachers to SHA. We have always wanted to have our teachers under the national insurer, even during the NHIF days. We held a meeting with SHA before renewing our contract with Minet for this final year, and they told us they didn’t have enough structures. They said they would need Ksh.37 billion to enroll our teachers, but even then, they were not ready to take them on this year,” she told the committee.
By Hezron Roy
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