By Saturday nation team newsdesk@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Friday, December 9 2011 at 22:00
Posted Friday, December 9 2011 at 22:00
Talks between the government and striking doctors collapsed on Friday after the latter rejected the government’s latest offer of Sh7.1 billion.
The strike, which has paralysed services in public hospitals countrywide, has now moved to the courts after the government and medical practitioners’ union failed to agree.
Public Services Minister Dalmas Otieno who stepped in for Medical Services Minister Anyang’ Nyong’o during the talks said the government had taken the drastic measure after doctors refused to “accept our reasonable offer”.
“Let us meet in court and that could be as early as Tuesday. This is because there has to be an arbiter. The Labour Relations Act is specific that medical practitioners cannot picket,” Mr Otieno said at 6pm after chairing the day-long meeting at Afya House, Nairobi.
He said the government had done its best by offering Sh7.1 billion.
But the secretary-general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, Dr Boniface Chitayi, vowed to continue with the strike and dared the government to go to court.
Threw its weight
“We are ready for the courts because this is a human rights issue. Article 41 of the Constitution grants every worker a right to strike,” Dr Chitayi said.
He spoke even as the Kenya Medical Association threw its weight behind the strike.
“The government should be held responsible for the suffering and deaths that have occurred as a result of its negligence of the health sector,” the association’s chairman, Dr Andrew Juma Suleh, said in a statement.
The government had offered them nothing new, he said, and instead had “repackaged what they have been offering for the last three weeks.”
The talks collapsed as a crisis meeting between the management and medical specialists to resolve the strike at Kenyatta National Hospital ended in disarray.
Sources who attended the meeting told the Nation that KNH chief executive Richard Lesiyampe summoned senior specialists working at the institution to help find a way forward in “balancing the quest for better pay and service provision during the strike.”
The hour-long meeting, which started at 2pm is said to have involved more than 50 doctors specialising in heart, eye, skin, children and reproductive health.
Friday’s meeting was supposed to find a way of resolving a growing disquiet among the specialists who have been running the hospital operations since Monday.
But sources said the meeting failed to find a solution and the two sides will be meeting again on Tuesday.
Died in the facility’s wards
Elsewhere, at least 33 people have reportedly died in Nakuru Town and its environs since the nationwide strike started.
According to records seen by the Nation at the Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital, 11 patients died in the facility’s wards between Monday and Friday morning.
Another 22 were brought to the hospital’s mortuary by their relatives.
At least three bodies are being received daily from outside, according to the hospital’s records.
Reports by Julius Sigei, Aggrey Mutambo, Timothy Kemei and Muchemi Wachira
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