By Njoroge Kinuthia
Tough talk, strong-arm tactics won’t solve disputes
Teachers country-wide are on strike, paralysing learning in public schools. Registrar doctors at the Kenyatta and Mathari hospitals are on strike, causing widespread suffering among patients.
The Government, determined to solve the problem once and for all, yesterday swung into action with a hammer and suspended 393 striking registrars and interns at the Kenyatta National Hospital. Problem solved!
Mutula Kilonzo should stop talking tough and quickly borrow a leaf from Medical Services minister Anyan’g Nyong’o and sack the striking teachers. That should teach teachers a lesson and end the strike problem.
minimise suffering
By pray, why is it so hard for the Government to sit down and talk to workers? Teachers have been shouting about their intention to go on a strike but no one bothered to talk them. The doctors did the same and no one negotiated with them. Must the Government wait to see suffering to act? Even so, we’d like to see whether talking tough and suspending workers will minimise the suffering.
Trail of misery for XTrail owners
Being caught up in standstill traffic on our highways, says Ms Upma Karman, is like being lined up in front of a firing squad – you have no where to run and you will get shot!
Upma and her husband were stuck in such traffic last Thursday evening on the junction Museum Hill Road and Naivasha highway when suddenly out of the semi-darkness emerged two men one on either side of their Nissan XTrail car. The men yanked off the wing mirrors and ran back into the darkness across the highway. “Lots of witnesses, but no one dared get out of their cars, everyone just thanked their lucky stars it was not their car.”
Nissan XTrails have been targeted by goons on this particular spot and Upma claims to know several others that have lost their mirrors. It is not hard to figure why XTrails are being targeted. According to Upma, an XTrail’s wing mirror costs at least Sh25,000.
She wonders why police haven’t arrested the notorious thugs who terrorise motorists on Museum Hill. Further, Upma admonishes motorists to stop buying stolen mirrors as they create a demand and thus encourage the thefts.
Sokoni’s intriguing web of wires
Sokoni is a market in Kahawa Wendani Estate. The market is very popular with locals and shoppers are assured of getting everything “under one roof”.
But that is for those who do not, and few do, look over the roof where according to a keen area resident, Fred Makana, danger is literally snoozing waiting to explode.
For on top of the rusty and dust-coated roof, lies a web of plastic pipes bearing power transmission wires (see our main picture). Not a bad thing because energy has been known to power development.
However, Makana wonders how Kenya Power, which recently installed digital meters at the market, can give such haphazard wiring a clean bill of health. Sokoni Stalls, he concludes, is just but another disaster-in-waiting.
overcrowded
“It remains unclear why Sokoni management and KPLC have never given a second thought to the electrical wiring within this business area which is mostly overcrowded,” says Makana.
Well, KPLC will definitely pay attention if perchance a fire breaks out. But do we have to wait for that really?
No clean water in lake town
Why should a township with a population of over 500 inhabitants use contaminated water 50 years after independence? This is one of the questions that are disturbing Mr Moses Kirui, a resident Ziwa town (which ironically means a lake) located 42km North of Eldoret. The town, he says, has no potable water and pit latrines are dug side by side with water wells, compromising the health of businesspeople and the general population. “Who is responsible for this mess? Where are public health officials? Where are our leaders? What action are they taking to avert this time bomb?”
DON’T YOU FORGET
Why did military ignore Tunyo Division youths?
Mr Sammy Cheboi wrote to PointBlank on August 10 complaining that the Kenya Defence Forces had violated the rights of youths in Marakwet East District. He said that no youth from two locations in Tunyo Division had joined the military in the past two years. The only sin the youth “committed”, he said, was to fall in Tunyo division, which cuts across two districts; Marakwet East and West. Last year, prospective recruits from Mon and Kibaimwa locations turned up at Tot only to be turned away on grounds that they were from Marakwet West and were asked to avail themselves at Kapsowar. But when they went there they were turned away too and told to go Marakwet East. The same violation was repeated at Tot during this year’s recruitment. Is the military deliberately punishing these able youth, Chief of Defence Forces, Julius Karangi?
