End doctors’ strike and what to do to avoid future stand-offs

Since the onset of devolution, better pay for doctors has stuck out like a sore thumb. In a way, wildcat strikes have become the norm.

The feeling of the medical fraternity is that the National Government found a pretext to procrastinate over a Collective Bargaining Agreement that was signed in 2013 with the doctors’ unions. To the National Government, health issues were devolved. Yet for resources, the County Government feeds off the National Government.

So whose baby is it anyway? The National Government even leased equipment worth Sh38 billion for the county governments to the chagrin of the Council of Governors. Perhaps, it is the grey zone that forms a fertile ground for the constant bickering between the doctors and the authorities.

And as patients suffered needless misery for the fourth day, the strike increasingly become a political problem. The political establishment has reacted with the usual perfunctory statements; the strike is illegal; let us dialogue; go back to work unconditionally. That does little to fix the problems facing a sector ailing from poor pay, lack of equipment and generally, poor working conditions.

In the run up to the 2013 General Election, the Jubilee coalition did not only promise free primary healthcare to all Kenyans by increasing health financing by between 6 and 15 per cent, it promised every family would have access to a fully equipped medical facility within a radius of 5 miles to their homes.

There was even a promise to improve remuneration for doctors and nurses. Granted, on maternal care, positive results have been registered with 52,000 lives between 2003 and 2014. Fourteen per cent of all women deaths is still maternal related.

Meanwhile, equipping at least two hospitals in each county through the Medical Equipment Supplies Scheme. Today, most of the machines are not working; either having failed or because there are no trained personnel to manage them.

The challenges facing the medical sector are big, but not insurmountable. Pay is just one of them. The Salaries and Remuneration Commission’s (SRC) recommendations on pay were rejected by medics, and for a good reason.

In the new public service job structure, SRC has ranked political office higher than those jobs that are essential and critical in a growing economy; education and health and those civil servants who do the heavy-lifting in the Civil Service ranks.

And that is not to imagine by any measure that political office should rank lower. Not at all. SRC is in possession of the tools to determine the intrinsic value of each civil service job. As a start, SRC should hold discussions with the doctors immediately.

Yet, in a way, the doctors have themselves to blame for their woes.

Anyone listening to their’ complaints will notice the overload of grievances and lack of a coherent, focused strategy. The contents of the CBA still remain vague. That needs to be dissected for clarity. It will also help map out the quick wins that ought to be consolidated fast.

Human suffering, if nothing else, should compel the medics to get back to work. The government likewise, should stop at nothing to find a mutually agreeable way out of this conundrum with a win-win scenario.