Home » Media Centre » Blogs » On the Doctors, Teachers, and Lecturers Strikes
Has the government so poorly managed public services that the only way that public servants (doctors, teachers, lecturers, police) feel they can influence the government is through strike action? The doctor’s strike that started yesterday is the latest in a long line of ongoing public service officers strikes. There’s the teacher’s strike now nearing the end of its second week. The Kenya National Union of Teacher’s (KNUT) issued a strike notice to the government demanding a 300 per cent increase in salary and a 50% increase in responsibility allowance. According to the teacher’s union the government has failed to implement salary and allowance increments agreed to in 1997.
There is the nation wide strike by lecturers and non-teaching staff at public universities that began on Thursday last week. The government quell the strike the government offered the university staff a monthly salary increment of 140 shillings: An offer so ridiculous that it is no wonder that the lecturer’s and university staff have vowed to continue their strike action until a more reasonable offer is made by the government.
In the health sector doctors went on strike yesterday with 3000+ doctors downing their tools and effectively paralysing medical services in public hospitals save for emergency services. The reason for the strike, failure by the government to implement the return to work formula, which included better working conditions and pay, agreed upon during the doctors and health workers strike in December 2011. The doctor’s strike comes less then a week after the Ministry of Medical Services suspended more than 300 trainee doctors striking over poor pay and working conditions at the Kenyatta National Hospital.
The police, have also joined in the action, and are on a go-slow demanding that the government honour salary increment agreements made in 2007.
The discontent within the public sector is no longer a rumble but a roar: And while the strikes will affect many tax paying Kenyans adversely it is hard not to sympathize with the striking civil servants. The teachers’ pay dispute has been pending since 1997, more than 15 years, and anyone who has been to a public hospital knows that the working conditions in public hospital are dismal.
At this point the government has one of two choices they can either repress the strikes or reform the public education, higher education, and health care systems to ensure that the working conditions and salaries of those who work in the sector are improved. At the moment the government seems to have taken an inexplicably ambiguous stance towards the striking public servants, and the industrial courts have declared both the doctors’ and teachers’ strikes illegal and ordering their return to posts. Striking teachers, lecturers and doctors have vowed to continue their strike, in spite of threats of sacking and declarations by government officials that there is no money for increments in the national budget, so it seems the chaos will continue indefinitely. And though the strikes are an indication of the urgent need for reform in the health, education and national security sectors there seems little willingness on the part of the government to undertake the necessary reforms. Does anyone wonder if there would be a change to these sectors if State officers i.e. MPs, the Cabinet etc were all required to use public services?
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