Power struggle at Kenya National Union of Nurses is far from over. The union has 27,000 registered members.A section of the members are blaming Registrar of Trade Unions of being partisan. The concern being, during the recent elections, out of about 50 election centres, 38 centres had results showing
officials who had been elected unopposed. During the recent rebel faction nurses’ representatives meeting in Kitui town, pressure was on embattled secretary general Seth Panyako to call elections for fresh office bearers. Former Machakos county nurses representative Halima Adan, a strong opponent of Panyako, said the union is at the verge of collapsing due to bad leadership. Halima called for immediate elections of new
officials adding that the current administration led by Panyako has outlived its usefulness. It is emerging even where officials were unopposed several incumbents were not listed in the returns. It was also observed from returns which curiously did not bother the registrar that in a purported national elections, several positions were returned blanks including the purported national executive council.
Seth Panyako
The elections were held on February 26 in few centres in disregard of an order stopping the elections. They argue that the procedure of conducting the union elections was violated and the incumbent introduced new rules to gain an upper hand at the polls. Panyako camp is said to have extracted rules from a controversial constitution whose case is live in court that is ELRC 681 of 2020. Panyako also acted as the election board chair, overseer and a member of the board that has remained a secret to him and his handpicked officials. The Halima-led team which is pushing for elections of new officials across all branches has sworn not to get tired until credible elections are held. The representatives also hailed the Central Organisation of Trade Unions for coming out strongly against the elections held in February saying they were dishonest and should be repeated. “We wish thank Cotu secretary general Francis Atwoli for bringing out the impunity at the helm of our union. An audit must be conducted for us to know where and how our affiliation fee and other funds have been utilised,” they said
