These Are Our PC Commitments

The cascading of the Performance Contract within the Ministry of Health and its agencies for the financial year 2023/2024 gained momentum after Cabinet Secretary, MoH, CS, Nakhumicha S. Wafula signed various PC agreements with first her two Permanent Secretaries, Ms. Mary Muthoni (Public Health), Mr. Harry Kimtai (Medical Services) and chairpersons of Semi-Autonomous Government Agencies (SAGAs) under the Ministry.

The KEMRI Board of Directors Chairperson, Dr. Abdullahi Ali who was accompanied by Board member, Dr. Tom Sewe and Ag. Director General Prof. Elijah Songok put pen-to-paper on KEMRI’s PC commitments with the Cabinet Minister at an event attended by the leadership from the SAGAs on Friday, 10th November 2023 at the Afya Annex.

The signing is in line with the government directive where His Excellency President William Ruto in August signed Performance Contracts with Cabinet Secretaries who were in turn expected to sign with their Permanent secretaries, Board of Directors and later to all public officers.

The PC signing is an affirmation of the Institute’s continued commitment in delivering health solutions for our
communities and is aligned to the Government’s Universal Health Coverage (UHC) priority areas. The current commitment is the 20th PC cycle within the Institute.

In his remarks, Principal Secretary, State Department for Medical Services, Harry Kimtai stated that, “the PCs
we are signing here today have incorporated priority areas that are instrumental in propelling the UHC agenda. In addition, these PCs are in tandem with the goals of your institutions as per the institutions five-year strategic plan.”

On her part, the PS, State Department for Public Health, Mary Muthoni retaliated her counterpart’s sentiments
saying , “the PCs will enable us to ensure we create an acceptable, available and affordable healthcare for Kenyans. These PCs will be a guide to implementing of policies, programmes and activities we have planned to help us achieve outlined priorities in UHC.”

While giving her speech at the event, the CS echoed comments by her technical leads- Mr. Kimtai and Ms.
Muthoni noting that the only way for health institutions to achieve UHC is by working together towards this
common goal. “What we are requested to achieve might not be easy alone, let’s build a coalition of achievers, a coalition that will stand at the end of each financial year and be proud of its achievements and take count of the journey we have made,” animated the CS.

Performance contract is a key element of the current public sector transformation strategy for achieving the
long-term development goals of institutions, ministries and the country at large.

The CS further directed state agencies to ensure there is prudent use of the resources entrusted to them, especially the most important resource which she pointed out was the human resource that must be well taken care of.

“To help us maintain the course, PC is key to government to remain responsible and transparent in everything we do. We therefore must be good stewards while maintaining the resources we are entrusted with, most
importantly, the human resource in which we are entrusted to shepherd,” she concluded

The signing of the KEMRI PC was witnessed by Prof. Songok and the Ag. Director Strategy and Compliance, Mr. Edwin Bett.