Jubilee Party Deputy Organising Secretary Pauline Njoroge has joined the growing list of Kenyans accusing the Ruto-led government of playing mind games with citizens over the effectiveness of its new Social Health Authority (SHA) system.
Through a lengthy post on X, Njoroge narrated how the government’s health insurance platform failed her when she needed it most, describing the experience as both frustrating and dehumanising.
Njoroge said that while preparing for hospital admission last week, she was advised to register for the SHA program as it might help settle some of her medical bills.
However, her efforts to enrol were met with a persistent system failure.
“We would input the OTP, it would buffer forever, then take us back to the start. Again and again, until we gave up,” Njoroge wrote on X. “We even called someone at SHA, and they told us that the system was down.”
Jubilee Party Deputy Organising Secretary Pauline Njoroge. Photo: Pauline Njoroge Source: Facebook
She said the outage left her wondering how vulnerable Kenyans in emergencies are when such a critical platform collapses.
“They have to pay a whole year’s premium just to qualify, and yet the system is down. It must be extremely frustrating and dehumanising,” she stated.
In her post, Njoroge disclosed that after several failed attempts, she finally managed to register and pay Ksh50,000 in premiums. But when her discharge bill was processed, the SHA system only covered Ksh4,000 — a fraction of the total cost.
“We all know using SHA for outpatient is like trying to draw water from a rock. So ni kama pesa yangu imepotelea hivyo,” she lamented.
She further questioned how taxpayers could have funded what she termed a “Sh104 billion unstable system”, suggesting that the money could have been better utilised.
“It’s just sad to imagine that taxpayers paid Ksh104 billion to build a system this unstable, not to mention the millions that continue to disappear in its maintenance,” she wrote.
