The ongoing reform agenda at the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) is set to transition to the next level with the scheduled adoption of a new organisational structure.
Following the conclusion of the legally defined one-month engagement period for organisations considering a rightsizing programme, KEMSA is all set to adopt are cently designed performance and service-oriented organisational structure to ensure compliance with oversight requirements by the end of this month.
As part of the organisational structure adoption, KEMSA will also advertise all the new functions early next week, paving the way for a competitive recruitment process.
The adoption of the new structure with a staff establishment ceiling of 378, featuring eight operating directorates, will provide the necessary impetus to guide the Authority’s transformation into an effective Health Products and Technologies (HPTs) organisation.
The ongoing transformation efforts spearheaded by the new KEMSA board, backed by the Government through the Ministry of Health, are geared at improving organisational governance, integrity and efficiency.
While providing a transformation update, following the conclusion of the recent staff consultation and stakeholder engagement process, KEMSA Chairperson Mary Mwadime, in a message delivered on her behalf by the Authority’s CEO Terry Ramadhani, 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 organisational framework and complies with all the relevant public sector human resource management regulations,” Mwadime said.
She said the new organisational structure was designed to improve the Authority’s performance and boost operating efficiencies, as it features redefined roles and functions aligned with the Authority’s statutory mandate.
There definition of functions, she said, has been undertaken to ensure operationalagility due to the merger of some departments and the functional repurposing of roles to align them to the KEMSA strategic plan.
She added that the redefined roles resulting from merging some positions and creating new functions based on the operational needs of the Authority would inadvertently result in staff redundancy.
As part of the transition to a new organisational 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.
She confirmed that a psychosocial support process, financial literacy, and career repurposing guidance are underway to provide all staff members with the necessary transition support.
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 mobilisation and compliance assurance mechanisms which have heavily affected the Authority’s effectiveness and productivity.
