A Kenyan judge Monday jailed seven officials of the medics union for a month for failing to call off a two-month strike by doctors at public hospitals that has seen at least a dozen die due to lack of medical care.
Judge Hellen Wasilwa said she could not delay further the contempt of court sentence she had suspended earlier on condition the doctors call off their strike. At least 5,000 doctors are on strike for better pay and to protest the dilapidated state of Kenya’s public health care.
“This court declines to review its order sentencing the applicants to one month jail term … you can now start serving your sentences, those are the orders of the court,” Wasilwa said.
Doctors want the government to implement pay raises in an agreement signed in 2013. That agreement would raise their salaries by 180 percent. Currently doctors earn an average basic salary of $400 to $850 per month compared to a Kenya legislator who earns nearly $14,000 a month.
The strike has caused a near-total paralysis in the country’s health sector and many are believed to have died from a lack of emergency services. Early in December, President Uhuru Kenyatta said at least 20 people had died as a result of the strike.
Kenyatta has twice asked the doctors to return to work, first appealing to their humanity for the suffering masses and then offering a partial increase of the salary hikes agreed upon in 2013.
The doctors’ union — the Kenyan Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, rejected both offers and urged the government to pay the full salary increases it promised three years ago.
In 2012, Kenya’s doctors went on strike to protest the bad state of public health care. Emergency rooms in some of Kenya’s public hospitals frequently don’t have gloves or medicine, and power outages sometimes force doctors to use their cell phones to provide adequate light for a surgical procedure.
[Associated Press]
FORCEFUL names for aphrodisiacs such as phwanya chinena (Pu$$y), gunpowder and mwana apeluke come from our cultural background on how a man is expected to perform in bed, says culture and literature expert Gankhanani Moyo.
And Moyo says the pressure for men to use aphrodisiacs comes from women.
Presenting a paper titled the “Poetry of Phwanya Chinena, the metaphorical nature of names of Aphrodisiacs” at the University of Zambia on Thursday afternoon, Moyo, an assistant dean in the School Literature, Culture and Arts, said men were under pressure to ‘perform’ in bed.
His presentation which aroused interest from men and women who filled the lecture room, addressed the many myths and realities of the presence of aphrodisiacs in Zambia.
uhuru wautwa
Doctors should be the highest paid professionals in any country. They’re highly skilled personel who save lives.
Mambo chemchem uko Kenya sasa. Uhuru ka waahidi uokozi wa kenya. leo hii anawafunga jela.yaani hutaka wakitoka jela watoke na ma gonjua yasiyo tibiwa. Ili wa jifunze . Mukuki kwa nguluwe una mtamu laki kwa bina adam unakuwa mchungu .Kasheshe kenya , naam wakati mugum kwa dactari owino
This should be embarrassing to the Kenyan Government and Uhuru Kenyatta in particular. How can someone spend 7 years at University to become a Medical Doctor and only to be paid “machenji” of less that US$1,000 per month – UNBELIEVABLE.
When I goggle for the most highly paid jobs in the world it is the Medical practitioners who top the list – SO WHAT IS HAPPENING TO KENYA??? I can see more refugees coming from Kenya to flood the Zambian employment market.
Africa will never cease to amaze me. Our priorities are always upside down. It is not that we dont know what to do but it is because of selfishness especially our politicians. The demands of the doctors are very genuine and shame upon the judge and the Kenyan government.
This is the craziest and weirdest Judge I have come across. How do you send people for fighting for what is rightly theirs to jail?. What a joke. It only happens in Africa.
Kenyata wawa. The difference is too big. Why should legislators get more than twenty times what learned doctors get. This should be a joke.