The Nairobi Hospital has sent home over 200 workers. The employees were fired as part of the hospital’s cost cutting measures and graft purge. The hospital claimed that the workers who were fired had either been performing badly or were involved in unethical practices.
“Besides the staff affected by normal rationalisation, the hospital is disengaging with all staff who have perennial performance issues or were implicated in unethical practices during forensic audits of the hospital’s operations,” The Nairobi Hospital said in a statement. “It is important to note that while our structure will have less staff in some categories, such as support services, more staff will be engaged in core clinical and nursing services to achieve an optimal balance between the skills and demand from our patients.”
Over the recent few months, the Nairobi Hospital has been facing financial and boardroom struggles.
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Lower hospital visits translated to reduced revenues for health facilities, prompting some medical institutions to implement layoffs and salary cuts.
A report in the media said that the hospital’s kitchen was overstaffed and that nurses were earning the lowest average pay and were demoralised. The hospital’s finances have been compounded by the low rate of hospital visits over last one year.
In addition, the hospital has been battling numerous boardroom wars. Late last year, details of intriguing boardroom fights over tenders at the hospital emerged. This was after chief executive officer, Allan Pamba, was ousted six months after his appointment. In court filings, Dr. Pamba linked his ouster to multi-billion shilling contracts at the health institution.
He further claimed he was targeted after he declined to prequalify a law firm, Diro Advocates LLP to the panel of advocates representing the hospital and to hire Earstar (EA) Limited for debt collection services despite requests by some members of the hospital’s board.