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Dry taps and doctors strike give Nairobi a more painful January

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Last week, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company asked car wash vendors to stop operations in a bid to curb use of water. PHOTO | FILE

Doctor’s strike and the biting drought have complicated spending plans for average households in Nairobi who have to dig deeper into their pockets for basic needs.

The residents living under $2 (Sh200) a day not only have to buy water from non-subsidised private suppliers but are also grappling with a strike that has kept doctors out of public health facilities.

All the country’s 2,700 public hospitals in the last 47 days are now operating on one engine as negotiations continue while parties cling to their tough positions.

The hardest-hit are those who would have otherwise accessed subsidised services at the largest referral hospital in the region Kenyatta National Hospital.

For mitigation, the State deployed the Kenya Defence Forces doctors to the facility to work with the nurses and clinical officers, who were also on strike but resumed recently.

Doctors downed tools on December 5, maintaining that they would not return to work without the government registering their June 2013 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and implementing it.

They have rejected counter offers and stuck to their guns even after President Uhuru Kenyatta intervened.

Indeed, the government is starting a more complicated second half of January in the labour circles with the university lecturers also downing tools from yesterday demanding better terms.

KNH bed occupancy, for instance, has been decreasing as the facility registers a low turn-out of patients due to the medics’ strike.

In the first week of the strike, the bed occupancy had dropped from 2,000 to 1,800, a significant decline for a facility that teems with humanity throughout the year.

The three major hospitals in Nairobi County, namely Mbagathi, Pumwani and Mama Lucy Kibaki are also affected, leaving patients at the mercy of expensive private facilities.

“I am urging members of the public to come to KNH for services without fear. I am also appealing to the doctors to reconsider their position and come to continue with dialogue. We are ready to engage them constructively,” said Health Secretary, Cleopa Mailu in a past interview.

Talks between the government and the medical practitioners’ union enters its third day today. Kenyans, especially those in far-flung areas of North Eastern, have been hit hard with the ravaging droughts, which have forced water companies to ration the commodity.

President Kenyatta on Wednesday said the national budget is set for a review to come to the aid of more than 1.5 million Kenyans feeling the drought heat.

Last week, the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company asked car wash vendors to stop operations in a bid to curb use of the basic resource.
Mr Phillip Gichuki, the managing director, said they were responding to warnings by the weatherman.