Kenyan doctors given 5 days to end strike or be jailed

By Andrew Wasike and Magdalene Mukami

NAIROBI (AA) – End your strike in five days or face jail time: That was the message a judge in the Kenyan capital Nairobi gave the doctors’ union amid a nationwide strike that has crippled healthcare services for 52 days.

Employment and Labor Relations Court Judge Hellen Wasilwa Thursday delivered a ruling granting the doctors another chance to continue negotiating with the government, calling the strike illegal.

“Given that the matter is in the public interest, I will allow some more time to have this issue resolved,” she said. “I will suspend the sentence for five days so the doctors will not be going to jail today; they have five days to call off the strike.”

After the ruling, officials of the local doctors union were greeted by over 5,000 striking doctors and medical students, joining them in a protest calling for the government to raise their salaries.

Dressed in scrubs and lab coats and holding signs blaming the Health Ministry for the strike, the doctors paralyzed traffic in the Kenyan capital.

Evans Ryaku, a protesting doctor, told Anadolu Agency, "What kind of a government is this? A government which wants to send trade unionists to jail. What we want is our pay hike and better working conditions."

Medical students who have been filling in for striking doctors have threatened to join the action, saying it is affecting their education as lecturers and consultants are not showing up for work.

Kenyan doctors are demanding a 300 percent pay rise under a 2013 collective bargaining agreement, raising the salary of the lowest-paid doctors to around $3,300.

The nationwide strike has forced thousands of Kenyans to seek treatment from expensive private hospitals.