NAIROBI, Kenya — The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union has announced progress in resolving a long-running dispute over basic salary adjustments for doctors, even as it rejected claims that some members were overpaid.
In a statement, KMPDU Secretary General Davji Bhimji Atellah said recent engagements with the Principal Secretary for Public Service had unlocked a key bottleneck involving a special payroll code required to implement the adjustments.
The dispute has involved multiple institutions, including the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), Council of Governors (CoG), the National Treasury, and the Directorate of Public Service Negotiations (DPSN), which jointly undertook a process to compute the salary adjustments owed to doctors.
According to the union, the reconciliation exercise established that approximately 95 P.c of doctors are owed salary adjustments, while about 5 P.c were flagged as having been overpaid. However, KMPDU has strongly disputed this classification.
“We firmly reject this interpretation, as it directly contravenes the ELRC 2020 judgment,” Atellah said, arguing that the government had wrongly treated routine annual increments as part of Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) obligations.
The financial implications have also shifted following recent reviews. While the DPSN had initially placed the outstanding adjustments at Sh450 million, a subsequent advisory issued by SRC in February 2026 revised the figure downward to Sh330 million.
Under a directive dated March 10, the SRC has instructed all county governments to immediately implement the salary adjustments, compute and include all accrued arrears, and apply a special payroll code to facilitate payments.
KMPDU said it will closely monitor compliance across counties to ensure the directive is fully implemented, while independently verifying the figures used in the computation.
The union maintains that doctors are entitled not only to the principal adjustments but also to interest accrued due to the delayed implementation of the CBA, signalling the possibility of further disputes if the issue is not conclusively resolved.
The matter is rooted in the enforcement of prior labour court decisions, including rulings by the Employment and Labour Relations Court, which have shaped the interpretation and implementation of doctors’ remuneration agreements.
Atellah noted that while the latest developments mark “significant progress,” the focus now shifts to full implementation and the conclusion of negotiations for the 2025–2029 CBA.
The salary dispute has been a recurring source of tension between doctors and government authorities, often disrupting healthcare services and highlighting broader challenges in public sector wage management.
As counties move to implement the SRC directive, the outcome will be closely watched as a test of intergovernmental coordination and adherence to labour agreements in Kenya’s devolved health system.
