Kirera Mwiti and Paul Muhoho @PeopleDailyKe
The National and County governments have put their foot down against the striking public doctors and told them to either resume work immediately or be fired.
In a no-nonsense statement jointly issued in Naivasha, President Uhuru Kenyatta and the Council of Governors (CoG) ordered the county service boards and the Ministry of Health to take immediate disciplinary action against the doctors who would not heed a proposed return-to-work directive.
The stern statement expressed sheer impatience by the governments who left no room for continued negotiations short of resuming duty or facing the sack.
Earlier, while addressing the fourth devolution conference, President Uhuru had warned that the government was no longer going to tolerate blackmail by the doctors.
He said the government had offered the best perks to the doctors, adding that they were bound to earn more than their counterparts in private hospitals.
“Today a medical intern earns more than a doctor at Aga Khan, Mater and Nairobi hospitals and we are being subjected to pay them for working for two hours and then they work in the public hospitals,” said Uhuru.
A visibly agitated Head of State said the doctors were not fair in their demands, saying he would not let Kenyans suffer any more. He said doctors were not in any way special from other public servants, saying what they were asking for cannot be achieved in one night.
Speaking to governors and other stakeholders at Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute in Naivasha, he said the doctors ought to be fair in their calling and stop the public suffering.
“Do they think we are stupid, if they fail to agree in this one last step… then we will sort them out,” said the President. And the unionsable doctors may now face stern action that could tame the powers of Kenya Medical Doctors, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU).
The joint statement said the union’s registration, certificate and role would be reviewed to ensure that each medical practitioner would henceforth have to negotiate individually with his or her employer.
“It is now time for the die to fall as they say; and for each individual doctor, pharmacists and dentists within the public service will negotiate with his/her particular employer, be it the National government in the case of those working in national facilities, or in the particular county governments,” read the statement.
The CoG chairman Peter Munya said hard decisions must be made to sort out the problem once and for all. In the statement, read by Munya flanked by Uhuru and governors, the National and County governments revoked the deal mediated between doctors and religious leaders and instead revised it to a new one that would apply beginning last January for medics who have not been on strike.
Equally, the additional arrears that had been proposed for doctors under the religious leaders mediated talks, backdated to July 2016, were withdrawn.
Under the religious leaders mediated talks, the government had offered the doctors a 50 per cent increment as a sign of goodwill and an additional Sh 600 million Risk Allowance backdated to July, 2016, on condition they were to resume work by yesterday morning.
“Consequently, for failure to call off the strike, the Government has now rescinded this offer and there will be no further negotiations on remuneration (salaries and allowances),” the national and county governments announced.
Munya said all the government offers would have brought the doctors’ annual wage bill as a singular budgetary item to more than Sh14.5 billion.
As a show of their seriousness to fire those defiant, the two tiers of government ordered interns and post-graduate doctors to resume work immediately and guaranteed security for those working.
The statement said the decision had been arrived at after failed mediation attempts by the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu), Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) and, lately, the religious leaders.
Commending the latest development, the chairman of the Inter-Religious Leaders Forum and Supreme Council of Kenya (Supkem) chairman Adan Wachu blamed the doctors for the woes that have befallen them.
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