The Clinical Officers Council (COC) is facing growing anger from clinicians who say the body charged with regulating their profession has instead become a source of frustration, mistreatment and alleged exploitation.
For many clinical officers, the Council is not an optional institution. It is the statutory gatekeeper for registration, licensing and professional recognition. It is the body clinicians must deal with if they want to practice lawfully, renew their licences, regularise their documents or sort out professional matters that directly affect their ability to work and earn a living. In other words, it holds enormous power over the careers of thousands of health workers across Kenya.
That is why the complaints now emerging from clinicians should concern not just the profession, but the Ministry of Health and the wider public as well.
Behind the polished language of regulation and professional standards, clinicians are painting a very different picture of the Council’s day-to-day reality. They describe an institution where some staff allegedly treat clinicians with open contempt, where help is difficult to get, where simple matters become endless runarounds, and where there are disturbing claims that money is demanded at multiple points while little meaningful service is actually delivered.
These are serious allegations. They point to more than bad customer care. They suggest a deeper problem inside a public regulatory body that appears to have forgotten that it exists to serve clinicians and the public interest, not to intimidate, frustrate or exploit the very professionals it regulates.
A regulator accused of turning on the people it regulates ¶
Clinical officers do not go to the Council’s offices for entertainment. They go there because they have to. They go because they need registration, licence renewals, guidance, documentation or regulatory clearance that only the Council can provide. Many of them are already stretched by the realities of working in Kenya’s health system. Some have travelled from far outside Nairobi. Some have paid fees and followed procedure. Some are trying to resolve urgent professional issues that determine whether they can continue earning a living.
What they should meet is professionalism, clarity and respect.
What some of them say they are meeting instead is hostility.
Clinicians who have interacted with the Council say some officers are rude, dismissive and unwilling to help. They describe an environment where people are spoken to harshly, bounced around without assistance and made to feel like they are inconveniencing staff simply by seeking services they have already paid for. It is the kind of treatment that turns a regulatory body into a tormentor rather than a support structure.
That matters because power in such institutions is not small. A regulator can delay your licence, frustrate your application, keep you in the dark about documentation or make a simple process drag on for weeks. When that power is exercised in an atmosphere of contempt, clinicians are left exposed and vulnerable.
This is why the complaints should not be trivialised as isolated customer care grievances. If a public health regulator is developing a culture where professionals fear being insulted, ignored or frustrated every time they seek help, then that is a governance failure.
The more disturbing claim: clinicians allege money is demanded everywhere ¶
Alongside the complaints about rudeness is an even more troubling allegation from clinicians: that money is allegedly demanded “at every corner” despite poor service delivery on the ground.
That claim is explosive because it goes beyond bad manners and into the territory of institutional integrity. If clinicians are being asked to part with money informally, or are being made to feel that progress depends on unofficial payments, then this is no longer just a customer service problem. It becomes a public-interest scandal involving abuse of office, exploitation and possible corruption within a statutory regulator.
The Council already collects official fees for registration, licensing and related services. That is not the issue. The issue is whether, beyond those official channels, clinicians are being subjected to additional informal demands while still receiving poor service, delays and mistreatment.
If that is happening, then the Council’s leadership cannot hide behind silence.
It must answer plainly: are there complaints of money solicitation by staff? Are clinicians being pushed into backdoor arrangements to get services they are already entitled to through official channels? Are there internal controls to stop staff from exploiting desperate clinicians? Is there a proper whistleblower system? How many complaints have been filed, and what action has been taken?
A regulator that handles licensing and registration wields enormous leverage over people’s livelihoods. That is exactly why its processes must be transparent, professional and tightly supervised. Once money starts becoming part of whispered complaints, the legitimacy of the entire institution is put at risk.
Why are clinicians paying fees and still being humiliated? ¶
This is what makes the complaints especially infuriating. Clinical officers are not asking the Council for favours. They are not seeking charity. They are paying fees, complying with legal requirements and following statutory processes. They are doing exactly what the system demands of them.
So why should they be insulted, frustrated or made to feel powerless in return?
Why should a clinician who has paid the Council’s fees still have to beg for help?
Why should a professional who has travelled to sort out a licensing or registration issue be tossed around by officers who act as if service delivery is a burden?
Why should clinicians be left feeling that nothing moves unless money changes hands or someone inside takes an interest in your case?
That is the heart of the anger here. It is not only about rude language or inefficient service. It is about an institution that appears to be exercising power without accountability over professionals who have little choice but to submit to its processes.
When a regulator becomes arrogant, clinicians are trapped. They cannot simply walk away and use a competitor. They must deal with the Council. That makes any abuse of power inside the institution especially dangerous.
The leadership of the Clinical Officers Council must answer ¶
The people at the top of the Council cannot act as though these are small complaints from a few impatient individuals. If multiple clinicians are raising the same concerns — rudeness, frustration, poor service and money demands — then leadership must answer for the culture inside the institution.
The Board Chairperson of the Clinical Officers Council is Dr. Joseph Choge. The CEO and Registrar is Mr. Ibrahim Wako. Publicly, the Council has projected itself as a professional body committed to regulation, standards and service. The Ministry of Health recently inaugurated the new board with fanfare and public declarations about strengthening the profession. That is precisely why the current complaints are so serious. They cut directly against the image the Council and the Ministry are trying to sell.
As board chair, Dr. Joseph Choge must explain what oversight the board is providing over service delivery, staff conduct and complaints handling at the Council. If clinicians are alleging routine mistreatment and money demands, what exactly has the board done to investigate the problem? What accountability mechanisms exist for staff who abuse their positions?
As CEO and Registrar, Mr. Ibrahim Wako must answer an even more direct question: what kind of institutional culture is he presiding over if clinicians are increasingly describing the Council as rude, exploitative and unhelpful? A CEO is not there to issue speeches and attend inaugurations. He is there to run the institution, supervise staff, enforce standards and ensure that the Council’s operations reflect the law and basic decency.
There is also a finance and oversight dimension to this issue. If clinicians are alleging money is being demanded in corners while official fees are already being collected, then the Council’s financial controls, complaint systems and audit oversight must be scrutinised. A public regulator cannot allow informal money networks to thrive around its service points while pretending everything is normal.
The Ministry of Health also owns this mess ¶
The Clinical Officers Council does not operate in a vacuum. It sits within the wider architecture of Kenya’s health regulation system and falls under the policy and oversight umbrella of the Ministry of Health.
That means Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale and Principal Secretary for Public Health and Professional Standards Mary Muthoni cannot watch from a distance and pretend this is a minor office issue. If a regulator under the Ministry’s watch is being accused by clinicians of arrogance, extortionary behaviour and poor service, then the Ministry must be dragged into the conversation.
It is not enough for the Ministry to inaugurate boards, pose for photos and speak grandly about professional standards. Those standards must be visible in the day-to-day experience of the professionals dealing with the regulator. If clinicians are paying fees but leaving the Council’s offices feeling insulted, ignored or shaken down, then the Ministry’s oversight has failed.
Aden Duale should be asked directly whether he is satisfied with the conduct of the Clinical Officers Council toward the professionals it regulates. Mary Muthoni should be asked what “professional standards” actually mean if clinicians are saying the Council’s staff treat them with contempt and allegedly demand money while offering little service.
The Ministry should not wait for a bigger scandal. It should demand a full internal review of COC’s customer service culture, complaint handling, licensing processes and any allegations of informal money solicitation. It should insist on a public complaints channel for clinicians and a transparent account of how complaints against staff are investigated and resolved.
Anything less would amount to protecting the rot.
This is how a regulator destroys its own legitimacy ¶
Institutions like the Clinical Officers Council survive on legitimacy. Their authority depends on the belief that they regulate fairly, professionally and in the public interest. The moment clinicians begin to see the Council as a place of harassment, humiliation and extraction, that legitimacy starts to collapse.
And legitimacy does not collapse only through spectacular corruption scandals. Sometimes it dies slowly through repeated daily abuses: a rude officer at the counter, a delayed document, an unexplained demand for money, a complaint ignored, a clinician made to feel small because they need a service only the Council can provide.
Enough of those experiences pile up and the Council stops looking like a regulator. It starts looking like a gatekeeping racket.
That is the danger facing the Clinical Officers Council today. If the allegations now coming from clinicians are not taken seriously, the institution will continue losing trust among the very professionals it claims to regulate and protect.
The complaint, in the words of a frustrated clinician ¶
And perhaps the most revealing part of this entire story is how one of the complaints is framed. Not as a polished memorandum. Not as a carefully worded official petition. But as a cry of frustration from someone who has clearly had enough:
“Dear Nyakundi, good morning. Kuna hii Clinical Officer Council. These people are rude and mistreating clinicians. Kuna two ladies — Janet and customer care — I am telling you Maina they are so rude and never help anybody. Kuna mbaba Msomali pia. Secondly they are always requesting for money every corner na hakuna kazi kwa ground. Hide ID.”
That is the message. Raw, messy, angry and deeply revealing.
Whether every part of it is ultimately proven or not, it captures a growing perception among clinicians that the Council has become hostile to the very people it exists to regulate. It captures the fear of speaking openly, the anger at being treated badly and the suspicion that money has become part of how things move.
Now the burden shifts to the people in charge. ¶
Dr. Joseph Choge, as Board Chairperson, must answer for the culture inside the Council.
Mr. Ibrahim Wako, as CEO and Registrar, must explain why clinicians are describing COC as rude, unhelpful and exploitative.
Aden Duale, as Health CS, must stop treating health regulation as a ceremonial affair and explain what action he will take against any regulator accused of abusing clinicians.
Mary Muthoni, as PS in charge of professional standards, must tell the country whether these are the standards her ministry is willing to defend.
Because a regulator that humiliates clinicians, frustrates them and allegedly turns every process into a money trap has no moral authority to lecture anyone about professionalism.
And if the Clinical Officers Council has truly become a place where clinicians are insulted, ignored and squeezed for money while services remain pathetic, then this is no longer an internal administrative problem.
It is a public scandal.