Doctors offered Sh45,000 more in fresh return-to-work package

Striking doctors have been offered an additional Sh45,000 in allowances from next month.

Doctors who have been in the same position for the past three years will also be promoted backdated to July this year.

However, Public Service Minister Dalmas Otieno on Wednesday said the government will not refund school fees for doctors who had sponsored themselves for Masters degree courses.

Pushing for more

This was part of the offer rejected by doctors on Tuesday who insisted that their strike was not just about money. The doctors pointed out that they were also pushing for better medical facilities.

But the minister on Wednesday, indicated that the government did not have Sh23.6 billion required to buy and upgrade medical equipment in public hospitals and clinics.

According to Mr Otieno, it is the demand for cash refund to self-sponsored Masters students and payment of registrars that had delayed a return-to-work formula.

“The doctors have raised legitimate grievances. They declined to call off the strike because they had not understood the details of the deal,” he said on Wednesday at the Kenya Institute of Administration when he launched the Masters in Public Administration programme.

He was later scheduled to meet the doctors for negotiations.

After a four-hour closed door meeting between doctors and their Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union on Tuesday, the medics said that the offer was not inclusive.

“There are two key categories that are missing in this offer...the public has not been given anything and there is no difference that will be seen in the institutions as a result of the government’s offer,” the union’s chairman Victor Ng’ani said.

The doctors complained that Monday night’s decision to call off the strike was hurriedly reached.

And a Cabinet decision freezing pay increases for public servants will only increase strikes in the country, workers unions have said.

Union of Kenya Civil Servants secretary-general Tom Odege said the Cabinet’s move without consultation with the workers was an affront to the Constitution.

“By taking an arbitrary decision over workers’ wages, the Cabinet has turned into a dictatorial institution that has no regard for law and order,” Mr Odege said in Nairobi.

The Kenya National Union of Teachers described the move as “ill-timed and reactionary.”

Workers can’t be cowed

“Workers, particularly their unions, cannot be cowed as it is their Constitutional right to demand for more pay,” the teachers’ union secretary-general David Okuta said.

Universities Academic Staff Union noted that the decision had thrown on-going talks between them and the government into a disarray.

Universities union chairman Sammy Kubasu described the move as giving by one hand and taking away what you have given with the other one.

“We will have to go back to the drawing board as lecturers to determine our next move of action,” Prof Kubasu said.