Seven Kenyan doctors jailed for not ending strike
later deployed to disperse hundreds of doctors holding a peaceful vigil in support of their colleagues that was being covered live on TV.
Doctors want the government to implement pay raises agreed upon in 2013. That agreement would raise their salaries by 180 percent. Currently doctors earn an average basic salary of $400 to $850 per month compared to a Kenya legislator who earns nearly $14,000 a month.
The strike has caused a near-total paralysis in the Kenya’s public health sector, and many are believed to have died from a lack of emergency services. Early in December, President Kenyatta said at least 20 people had died as a result of the strike.
Kenyatta has twice asked the doctors to return to work, first appealing to their humanity for the suffering masses and then offering a partial increase of the salary hikes agreed upon in 2013.
The doctors’ union rejected both offers and urged the government to pay the full salary increases promised three years ago.
In 2012, Kenya’s doctors went on strike to protest the bad state of public health care. Emergency rooms frequently don’t have gloves or medicine, and power outages sometimes force doctors to use their cell phones to provide adequate light for a surgical procedure.
Respected anti-corruption crusaders have said the problem is not the wage bill but corruption. Several large-scale corruption scandals exposed recently — including one at the health ministry where government auditors questioned the diversion of $46 million — have brought many Kenyans to question the president’s commitment to ending graft.
Leading economist David Ndii argues that Kenyatta’s regime is the most corrupt of the four presidents Kenya has had. In an opinion piece in Kenya’s largest circulation newspaper, The Nation, in December, Ndii argued the reason the government does not want to increase salaries is because officials want to “create more headroom for looting.”
Kenya has fallen six places to be ranked 145 out of 167 countries in an index by Transparency International for 2016.