Doctors’ boycott regrettable but crucial for reforms, war on graft
Empty beds at Mbagathi Hospital in Nairobi during the first day of the doctors and nurses national strike on Monday. The health workers are demanding a pay raise agreed upon in 2013. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO
The latest work boycott by medical workers will be for government failure to implement a collective bargaining agreement arrived at in 2013 to end the previous general strike.
This industrial action is somewhat different though it also shows the government’s inability to tame the runaway grand corruption.
The health sector previously has not been in the media in terms of shady deals. However, the recent revelations of the Afya House tenders including that for overpriced modified container clinics seems to have aroused anger across the board.
Hash-tagged #Lipakamatender, perhaps a pun on the ease with which the government pays for dubious deals, the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists’ and Dentists’ Union says doctors too want to be paid the way it pays tenderpreneurs: generously and in advance.
While the action is justified especially with the anti-corruption theme, a few action points seem to have been missed again by organisers of the strike.
The first one is that we doctors have failed to sensitise the public on why such an action, while regrettable, is happening.
Secondly, addressing the root cause as to why the source of the funds to remunerate health workers adequately, equip and build enough health facilities lack is important. As has been proven before the government is capable of enduring even a two-month strike.
The government’s tactic is that after the painful loss of life that will surely follow such action, even patients and ordinary citizens who would be on our side will change their support.
As an important component of such an action, achieving and maintaining public support is the only sure way of a speedy and painless resolution of this impasse.
If 90 per cent of Kenyans said they would take electoral action against the government for failure to meet its pledge on healthcare reforms, there would be no need for a strike.
The incumbent government will meet the demands quickly. I could have missed this, but was there a public opinion poll of the public’s view on the matter?
On one hand, the county governments say they have no funds to implement the pay raise doctors want. The figures needed puts the annual necessary amount at Sh8 billion. Not a large amount but not too little also.
For the county governments on whose hands the health docket falls, the question will now be where do these funds come from?
Given the current budgetary allocation to counties stands at about Sh331 billion or so, it is unlikely that they will comfortably implement the pay rise without a disruption of their existing budgets as most already spend roughly 65 per cent of budgetary allocation on salaries.
The Commission on Revenue Allocation in its planning seems to miss the point that healthcare is an extremely expensive devolved function that grows annually.
This is a point that doctors should use to ask for a separate health “equity and improvement” kitty.
The only recourse for counties is to ask for extra allocation from the national government and a total transfer of all devolved health functions cash.
Another regret is that Central Organisation of Trade Unions, which is the umbrella body for all unionised employees, will not be joining the doctors. At the end of the day when corruption is tamed, there will be enough resources for quality healthcare for workers too.
