Injured civil servants get Sh6.8bn insurance payout
The National Health Insurance Fund paid out Sh6.77 billion in compensation to civil servants injured in the line of duty during the 2022/23 financial year.
The National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) paid out Sh6.77 billion in compensations to civil servants injured in the line of duty during the 2022/23 financial year, fresh data by the insurer shows.
The Work Injury Benefits Act (WIBA) 2007 requires employers to insure their employees against work-related injuries.
Employers are liable to compensate workers who get injured through accidents at the workplace.
The Act also covers workers who suffer disablement or death from work.
The Treasury contracted the NHIF to provide group life and final expense insurance, group personal accident (GPA) and Work Injury Benefits Act, and road and air evacuation services for 120,047 civil servants and National Youth Service workers.
“The fund was contracted by the Government of Kenya to provide group life cover and last expense for principal members and dependents, for the civil servants, employees of the National Youth Service,” said the NHIF.
In the fiscal year 2022/23, the insurer paid compensation amounting to Sh8.69 billion, out of which Sh6.77 billion was for civil servants Work Injury Benefits Act, Sh882.9 million for road evacuation, and Sh90.7 million for air evacuation, according to the data.
The NHIF was last month put on the spot for directly procuring commercial insurers to co-insure the civil servants instead of going through a competitive tendering process.
The insurer had issued the tenders for the co-insurance and brokerage services but the tenders were terminated due to irregularities in the tender documents.
This, argued NHIF, left it with little time to procure the firms before the expiry of the contracts it had signed for the same services.
The insurer last month retained six firms — Jubilee Allianz General Insurance, Britam General Insurance, CIC General Insurance, Old Mutual General Insurance, APA Insurance, and GA Insurance — to provide co-insurance services for the GPA and WIBA covers.
The NHIF has also retained Britam Life Assurance, CIC Life Assurance, Pioneer Insurance, Sanlam Life Insurance, and Absa Life Assurance to provide co-insurance services for the group life and final expenses cover.
The NHIF was also recently fingered after some of the insurers it has sub-contracted delayed paying claims amounting to Sh4.8 billion to retired and serving government workers.
Official documents show that over 4,000 teachers, 562 civil servants, 650 police officers, and several judges who were active pension contributors had died as of 2021 but their kin were yet to be compensated.
