RE: OUR STAND ON NHIF RATES - BIFU
Banking Insurance and Finance Union, BIFU which respects workers in the Banking industry, overwhelmly declare total opposition the new NHIF rates which are aimed at intimidating the Kenyan workers against their own hard earned wages.
The Union would like to warn its members against the new scheme. We want to send a strong message to NHIF that nobody in the union is going to be deducted such huge amount of money while watching towards a scheme that remains totally strange to us.
We reiterate that the failure of the new scheme is as a result of NHIF thinking that they can sit down without consulting and come up with a workable solution towards healthcare in this country and let them be warned that as workers we are alert to these machinations.
World over, a Kenyan worker is the poorly paid and vis-à-vis he is the highly taxed. The move to deduct him more is to frustrate his life against the Kenyan constitution Bill of Rights.
As a way of opposing the new rates, BIFU is going to mobilize its members for an industrial action the minimum execution being nationwide strike. This decision is going to run in direct parallelism with our appeal filed against the Court ruling last month at the Court of Appeal.
We therefore send another strong message to the government of Kenya to convene a crisis meeting within the shortest time possible between itself, COTU (K) and the NHIF management. We believe this is the only form that will come up the final consensus that will be accepted by our members nationwide as opposed to the current lopsided and unilateral board room decisions that the NHIF management is keen to ride on.
Isaiah Kubai
GENERAL SECRETARY