Kenyan doctors, whose strike entered its 36th day on Thursday, have reportedly stopped working in public hospitals because they still maintain private practices. This is according to Manyatta MP Gitonga Mukunji.
The doctors have been protesting the government's refusal to post medical interns and to follow a 2017 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) on doctors' labor terms by leaving their duty stations since March 14.
But not all doctors, in Mukunji's opinion, are on strike. According to him, they have only given up on public hospitals in favor of their private medical facilities, whose demand has increased since the start of the strike.
“Our doctors are not on strike. Many of them have private practices and they are doing it in private hospitals and are continuing with their work,” the MP said on Citizen TV’s Daybreak program on Thursday.
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He described the strike as “a deliberate experiment on whether we should do away with public hospitals.”
Mukundi called for what he described as open-mindedness, even though discussions between medical professionals and the Health Ministry over the past month have been fruitless due to doctors' accusations of intimidation and a refusal to change their stance.
Instead of the Ksh.206,000 stipulated in the 2017 CBA, the government has offered the medical interns Ksh.70,000, an offer that the doctors have declined.
To facilitate additional talks, the Employment and Labour Relations Court has extended its orders suspending the lengthy doctors' strike.
