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Today marks 43 days since doctors downed their tools demanding better working conditions. Among the key issues in the contested 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) was a 300% pay hike that would see the lowest paid doctor earning a salary of Ksh. 342,000.
With the clarion call of #LipaKamaTender, the government would brand the striking doctors as greedy opportunists who care little about the suffering of patients.
Just what is in the CBA
With the government’s insistence on portraying the doctors as insensitive, they have moved forward to explain to Kenyans why they are on the streets and not in hospitals and how a full implementation of the CBA will benefit them. The clarion call too changed from #LipaKamaTender to #MyBadDoctorExperience.
Today doctors are sharing their experiences at work that made them go on strike to have this CBA implemented with #MyBadDoctorExperience
— kmpdu (@kmpdu) January 16, 2017
The statements are mainly focusing on the working conditions that the doctors want improved so that they can give better service to Kenyans.
I had to use my bare hands to stop bleeding in a HIV positive mama due to lack of gloves instead I had to take ARV’s #MyBadDoctorExperience
— Health Transformer (@bin_abeid) January 16, 2017
The doctors rejected the government’s offer of a 40 % pay hike insisting on a full implementation of the CBA.
Govt offering docs MONEY to send them back to poorly staffed & equipped hospitals is contempt for Wanjiku #MyBadDoctorExperience #presspass
— Wandia Njoya (@wmnjoya) January 16, 2017
#MyBadDoctorExperience
Pleading with a mother not to take her tiny preterm baby home coz she can’t afford 200/- per day for nursery care.— Stella Kanja (@ellatell) January 16, 2017
#MyBadDoctorExperience Mothers throw their dying babies in our arms expecting us to perform miracles which we often do in failed systems.
— Awuor Ondeng (@AwuorOndeng) January 16, 2017
Some of the issues raised by doctors involve staffing and equipment in public hospitals.
#MyBadDoctorExperience Cancelled theare list beacuse the only available scrub nurse was sick #lipakamatender #implementcba
— Clarita (@Emm_cita) January 16, 2017
#MyBadDoctorExperience Donors channel billions to fight malaria yet for a whole week we had no antimalarial drugs in a level 5 hospital!!
— Nic mos mog (@Mosmog) January 16, 2017
At times this involved directly challenging the president’s priorities and his efforts in curbing pillage of public resources.
Husband is the president; Wife runs to raise billions for MOH, sister loots billions from MOH. Recipe for #MyBadDoctorExperience
— A Karani Onsomu (@erwoti) January 16, 2017
A court ruling has declared the strike illegal and a warrant of arrest has been issued against the doctors’ union leaders, but it remains to be seen whether threats will take the doctors back to the hospitals where they will be expected to perform miracles in under-staffed and ill equipped facilities.
