Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) is set to transition its organizational structure in new reform agenda meant to ensure compliance with oversight requirements by end of July. The Medical Authority has said that it will have redefined roles and functions among other operational changes to align with its constitutional mandate.
The redefinition of functions has been undertaken to ensure operational agility due to the merger of some departments and the functional repurposing of roles to align them to the KEMSA strategic plan. The redefined roles resulting from merging some positions and creating new functions based on the operational needs of the Authority will inadvertently result in staff redundancy.
Following the conclusion of the legally defined one-month engagement period for organizations considering a rightsizing programme, KEMSA will also advertise all the new functions this week, (the last week of July) paving the way for a competitive recruitment process.
The new structure contains in it a staff establishment ceiling of 378, featuring eight operating directorates, mandated to provide the necessary impetus to guide the Authority’s transformation into an effective Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) organization.
KEMSA has been in the middle of major corruption cases, costing taxpayers millions of Shillings, such as ‘Covid Millionaires’, inflation of drugs, and recently, the disappearance of drugs and condoms worth Billions. The ongoing transformation efforts spearheaded by the new KEMSA board, backed by the Government through the Ministry of Health, are geared at improving organizational governance, and largely doing away with cartels involved in corruption.
New Recruitment
While providing a transformation update, following the conclusion of the recent staff consultation and stakeholder engagement process, KEMSA Chairperson Mary Mwadime, said the key objective of the KEMSA reforms is to address challenges in the national supply chain authority. The challenges, she said, are being handled by establishing end-to-end visibility of health products and strengthening accountability and reporting at all levels of the supply chain.
“The new performance and service-oriented structure is an improvement to the current organizational framework and complies with all the relevant public sector human resource management regulations,” Mwadime said.
As part of the transition to a new organizational structure with an establishment ceiling of 378, as approved by the State Corporations Advisory Committee (SCAC), all KEMSA staff will be expected to apply for the posts advertised next week. The posts, she assured, will be competitively filled with competent persons due to the urgent need to facilitate priority reforms at KEMSA.
In the reform process, Mwadime assured that the impacted staff will be humanely treated with the Authority strictly complying with the legal provisions in the computation of a reasonable separation package. The package approved for impacted staff, she said, will include severance pay at the rate of 15 days of basic pay for each year of service and any leave accrued but not obtained. The package will also feature any outstanding dues for days worked, one month’s notice pay, and a two-month ex-gratia payment with continued salary payments until the jobs currently held fall off.
Over the years, several oversight bodies have cited the current organizational structure as an impediment to KEMSA’s service delivery capacity. As currently structured, KEMSA is not well geared to support critical functions, including planning, quality management, partnerships, resource mobilization, and compliance assurance mechanisms which have heavily affected the Authority’s effectiveness and productivity