As Coronavirus continues to take an inevitable death toll throughout the globe, Kenyan doctors who were contracted by Ministry of Health as COVID-19 call agents have not been paid.
Handling emotional calls can take its toll on call agents, who may be in no fit state to take the next call if they’ve just been brought to tears by a caller’s sad situation.
It is is even terrible in this situation because, the call agents that are supposed to pick the distressing calls are already sinking in depression due to debts and unpaid salaries.
ICT and Health Ministries set up a call center for psycho-social support to Kenyans during the Covid-19 pandemic pic.twitter.com/dksRT1RF3m
— PEOPLE DAILY (@PeopleDailyKe) June 25, 2020
The doctors took to Twitter to complain on how the MoH has left them confused and being reduced without pay as days go.
Hello. Please help.
We would appreciate if you shed a spotlight on this issue.
Graduate doctors were contracted by the
Ministry of Health to serve as Covid-19
frontline call agents (the 719 calls)from April
2020 for 3 months. They were based at the
Safaricom house.They were paid only for 1 month & they have not been paid their May & June salaries. Even more, the ministry in May reduced the doctors from 50 to 25 with a promise that the jobs would be sustained by the World bank for 6 months.
But last week, they were told the contract is over & services rendered obsolete despite the rising cases.
But interestingly; the calls are still going
through; it is obvious they were replaced in a
very sinister way. They followed up with the
Ministry and they were told they arent likely to
be paid.All they need is to be paid for the time
they worked. Could you please help them by
shedding light on this issue? Thank you so
much!
The best the government can do is to pay the medics with respects that this is an inevitable part of the job.
Another medical practitioner shared almost similar story on Twitter.
“This govt is fucked up…On march we went for an intense training at Karen called by a “public private” company called ACDI paramedics to train on how to respond to covid 19 calls. It was alleged it was a project the government was going to run 50 Ambulances. Ilikunywa Maji,” Phil Night tweeted.
Is this the States way of giving professionals time and space they need to recover from an emotionally challenging situation?
