Tifa poll: Doctors’ strike, fake fertiliser, floods and road accidents now Kenyans’ top concerns
Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen (inset) has reintroduced stringent measures to curb road carnage.
For the first time in a long while, the price of unga, or fuel, is not the main concern of Kenyans.
Their worries are now shifting to fake fertiliser, heavy rains and floods, the increasing number of road accidents and the doctors' strike, now in its second month.
These are the findings of a Trends and Insights For Africa (Tifa) survey.
The poll surveyed 2,912 people across Kenya through telephone interviews between April 27 and 29.
As fate would have it, Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mithika Linturi is the individual considered most responsible for the sub-standard fertiliser, with 53 per cent of Kenyans aware of the programme blaming him for its disastrous implementation.
Some of the 560 bags of substandard fertiliser that were seized at the National Cereals and Produce Board depot in Molo, Nakuru County on March 23, 2024.
Other entities blamed for the poor quality fertiliser include fertiliser-producing plant KEL Chemicals Limited, which accounts for six per cent of the blame, followed by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (5 per cent).
The National Cereals and Produce Board and the Ministry of Agriculture each account for four per cent.
Nearly one-fifth (17 per cent) of the respondents don't know who to blame.
Family members
On the doctors’ strike, at least nine out of 10 Kenyans (89 per cent) are aware of the standoff, with 56 per cent of these respondents saying that they or their family members have been directly affected by the absence of medical staff from hospitals.
Western region is the worst hit area by the doctors’ strike, with 69 per cent of respondents saying they have been directly affected by the industrial action.
Hundreds of health workers participate in a demonstration in Nairobi on April 9, 2024.
They are followed by Mt Kenya (61 per cent), Nairobi and Nyanza (59), Lower Eastern (56), Coast (55), and Central Rift (46), with the South Rift and Northern Regions tailing this specific demographic with 43 per cent.
Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha is the individual Kenyans perceive in the TIFA poll as most blamed for the medical workers’ strike at 47 per cent. At 28 per cent, the medical workers’ union follows in the list of those blamed for the industrial action that has paralysed operations at public hospitals.
Seventy-eight per cent of Kenyans believe there has been an increase in the number of road accidents.
Steering buses
Only 15 per cent of respondents believe the number of accidents has decreased, with another 4 per cent saying the situation has remained the same. Three per cent do not know if there has been a change.
Public transport drivers steering buses and matatus were blamed by 29 per cent of Kenyans for the rise in accidents.
Transport CS Kipchumba Murkomen came in second as the individual most responsible for the deadly accidents at 25 per cent.
Other entities blamed for the accidents include the Traffic police (12 per cent), The National Transport and Safety Authority (6 per cent), long-distance transporters (5 per cent), Kenya National Highways Authority (3 per cent), with poor roads, pedestrians/passengers and boda boda operators at one per cent each.
More than half of residents in Nairobi (56 per cent), Northern Kenya (53 per cent), and Lower Eastern (53 per cent) say their areas have been affected "a great deal” by the floods.
Significantly higher
This figure is significantly higher than the national average of 36 per cent of those feeling their regions have been greatly affected by the floods.
Residents stare down at a flooded section of the Thika Superhighway at the Kahawa Sukari exit on May 1, 2024.
Some 31 per cent of Kenyans feel they have been “somewhat” affected, with another 32 per cent saying they have not been affected “at all."
“As indicated at the outset, the public’s (and the media’s) focus on inflation and the associated cost-of-living issue has been largely ‘overtaken-by-events’ recently, with the medics’ industrial action, the fertiliser scam-scandal, almost daily road carnage, and the on-going heavy rains and floods in many parts of the country taking ‘centre stage’,” TIFA researcher Tom Wolf told the media.
