Work injuries: can you sue your employer, who pays the hospital bills, and how WIBA compensation is worked out
Work Injury Benefits Act, 2007 · sources read 5 Oct 2026
You cannot sue your employer for damages over a work accident or work-related disease; compensation is paid only under the Work Injury Benefits Act (WIBA). Your employer must pay your reasonable medical and hospital costs, and you can still sue someone else, such as another driver, who caused the accident.
- Deadline
- Fatal accident: notice to the employer, with a copy to the Director, within 24 hours.
- Deadline
- Lodge your claim within 12 months of the accident, or of the death.
- Deadline
- After the Director's written reply to your objection, you have 30 days to appeal to the court.
- Where
- Your employer and the Directorate of Occupational Safety and Health Services (State Department for Labour)
Steps
- Tell your employer about the accident, in writing or verbally, as soon as possible. If a worker has died, the notice must reach the employer, with a copy to the Director of Occupational Safety and Health Services, within 24 hours.
- Give your employer the bills for treatment. It must pay reasonable costs of medical, dental, surgical and hospital treatment, nursing and medicine.
- Lodge your compensation claim within 12 months of the accident (or of the death).
- If you disagree with the Director's decision, object. If you are still unhappy with the written reply, you can appeal to the court within 30 days.
- If someone other than your employer caused it, such as another driver, you can claim under WIBA and also sue that person for damages.
Watch out
- If the injury keeps you off work for 3 days or more, you get periodic payments equal to your earnings, within minimum and maximum amounts set by the Cabinet Secretary.
- Permanent disability compensation is calculated on 96 months' earnings, within the minimum and maximum amounts set in the Act's Third Schedule.
- If you also win damages against a third party, the court takes into account the WIBA compensation already paid.
- If the worker dies, compensation goes to the dependants under the Act's Third Schedule, within minimum and maximum amounts set by the Cabinet Secretary. Dependants are presumed to have been wholly dependent on the worker unless the contrary is proved.
- On top of death compensation, the employer must pay reasonable funeral expenses, up to a maximum set by the Cabinet Secretary.
- Compensation the worker already received for the injury is not deducted from what the dependants get after the death.
- The Third Schedule sets children's shares as a percentage of the 'workman's allowance': 12.5% for one child, rising to 32.5% for five, and a rate set by the Director for more than five.
Who this covers
- Employees injured, made ill or killed by their work, and their dependants.
Official sources (1)
- Work Injury Benefits Act (Cap. 236, No. 13 of 2007), version of 31 December 2022 new.kenyalaw.org · read 5 Oct 2026