Coronavirus: Extra Allowances For All Machakos County Health Workers

Machakos Governor, Dr. Alfred Mutua has today announced that all healthcare workers in the county will receive a special monthly allowance in appreciation of their work at the forefront of fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic. The extra allowance will range from Kshs. Kshs 20,000, 10,000 & Kshs 5,000 per month based on the health workers’ responsibilities.

“The allowances we are giving our health workers are just a token of appreciation based on what we can afford so as to show them that we care and we will continue supporting them and ensuring we have the right equipment, commodities, and environment to keep them safe. We have made this decision based on the doctrine of necessity, public interest and the fact that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” stated the Governor.

According to the Governor, the health professionals who are in the Machakos COVID-19 Surveillance team doing door to door monitoring of quarantined patients will receive 20,000 shillings. Non-professional surveillance team members to get Kshs. 10,000 per month whilst other professional health workers – doctors, nurses, clinical officers will receive Kshs. 10,000 shillings. The supportive health worker cadres will receive 5,000 shillings.

Dr. Mutua pointed out that the decision was arrived at based on the doctrine of necessity, public interest and the fact that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

The allowances according to Dr. Mutua, will start from April 1st, 2020 for an initial period of three months.

Machakos already has 122 isolation beds spread over 9 sub-counties. Healthcare workers who will be working in isolation wards will also receive additional allowances equivalent to that of the surveillance teams.

“In addition to the allowances, we are ensuring that we are providing adequate masks to all health workers [remove – so that each has sufficient mask]. This is in addition to sanitizers and temperature guns that have been availed in health facilities. Protective gear is available to frontline health workers handling COVID-19 patients,” Dr. Mutua stated.