Young civil servants and teachers hardly know that the comprehensive medical insurance scheme they enjoy is not a recent development. It is hardly 20 years old. And it didn’t come under lock and key as it is today.
It was a question of hop, step and jump and go! This took years. In the interim, before the gunshot saying Go, it was toil, tears and sometimes blood before the civil servants and teachers began benefiting from the comprehensive medical scheme they see today.
Two leaders made it happen. President Mwai Kibaki and Dalmas Otieno. I salute them.
How? This is how.
It was under the second tenure of the Presidency of the late Mwai Kibaki that civil servants began enjoying the current comprehensive medical insurance cover.
Civil servants and later, teachers are indebted to the wisdom, judgment and the ingenuity of the then Kibaki’s Minister for Public Service, Dalmas Otieno in his second administration for this boon.
Where did the Minister get the money to fund the medical insurance scheme?
By 2009, teachers and their civil servants’ counterparts enjoyed Medical Allowance to compensate for the severely limiting medical cover under the then National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF). The allowance was introduced in 2003 during the First Kibaki administration to help civil servants and teachers supplement the restrictions, in terms of coverage of NHIF.
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The NHIF (now SHA) statutory deduction states that the government, as an employer of civil servants deducted had, limited benefits to the employees. The joke then was that NHIF pays for the bed when an employee is admitted in a hospital.
Clearly the deductible sum was not suitable to serve a person’s medical coverage. It was the feeble benefits that induced the Minister to persuade civil servants and teachers to allow him to consolidate the medical allowances and secure major medical health insurance for them.
The argument of Dalmas Otieno was that neither the statutory deductions to NHIF nor the medical allowances civil servants and teachers received met the sum total of cost of physician’s visits, hospitalization or prescription drugs.
The former Minister said most civil servants and teachers feared falling sick or going to the hospital when they fell sick.
He painted a grim picture government employees faced when he said that instead of civil servants taking their bodies to hospital when they fell sick, their bodies forced them to go to hospital during emergencies.
“The medical allowance you receive cannot meet the unexpected medical expenses associated with visiting a physician, hospitalization, or prescriptions,” Dalmas said during the series of consultative sessions he made with officials of Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), Kenya Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) and Civil Servants Union (CSU).
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Dalmas held many sessions with various cadres of employees, alongside KNUT and KUPPET at the Kenya School of Government, then Kenya Institute of Administration (KIA) to get support for his unique medical scheme.
It was not easy convincing the civil servants and teachers to buy his idea. They feared that having enjoyed medical allowance for some five or so years, the government wanted to abolish it altogether, and not make good the promises Dalmas was committing the government to. They however, at length, gave him the benefit of doubts. Then Permanent Secretary, as the Principal Secretaries were then called, Titus Ndambuki and his team of technocrats, by his side—the cadre of civil servants who advise the government on policy making.
“I know the medical allowance means a lot to you. However, it has become part of your salary, in which case you don’t set it aside to meet medical emergencies. It cannot help you to meet a serious medical emergency even if you set it aside for the purpose,” I remember Dalmas reasoning with the union officials. I attended the meetings as the public communication arm of the State Department for Public Service.
Satisfied with the reasoning, civil servants gave the Minister the authority to withdraw the medical allowances from their pay slips, consolidate them and secure a major or comprehensive medical insurance cover for them.
The Employee medical Insurance scheme has ably supported civil servants and teachers in times of medical need and emergencies. It has also acted as a stabilizing force for employers by ensuring a healthier and more secure workforce as employees don’t fear falling sick nor do they fear going to hospital when they fall sick.
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Civil Servants and teachers have never had a golden moment concerning their health such as the framework this provides. They should be grateful to Dalmas Otieno for making this possible.
The structure of the scheme should not be watered down or varied to the disadvantage of the civil servants.
The best the government can do for its employees on this public policy question is to improve the medical insurance scheme so that they, the employees, can give their undivided minds and spirits to serving its citizens as effectively and efficiently as possible.
I would like to see the Cabinet Secretary for Public Service stand up for civil servants on this issue more than SHA authorities. After all, it is one of his predecessors, more than a decade ago, who consolidated the medical allowance into the life assuring and saving medical insurance scheme civil servants now enjoy.
By Kennedy Buhere
Communication Specialist
0725327611
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