EDITORIAL: Looming strike avoidable – Business Daily

In what has become a near routine at this time of the year, the nurses have issued a notice of intention to go on strike on December 10.

This effectively means Kenyans will once again watch as the sick writhe in pain in public hospitals unattended. Those with money will simply shift to private hospitals.

It is almost certain that the strike will happen because we have seen this type of standoff before and know the drift. The nurses will issue a strike notice as they have just done and the government will take to high-handedness in its response leading to a catastrophe. This was the case last year when the nurses went on a five-month strike, that only ended after the Ministry of Health and county governments struck a deal — the implementation of which is at the centre of this strike notice.

The issue is that the employers of nurses committed to pay the 26,000 workers Sh5,000 each in annual uniform allowance and increase their risk allowance by Sh3,000 to Sh23,000. This, the Kenya National Union of Nurses says, have yet to be done.

One might imagine such a clear case could not be left to fester, become the centre of conflict and culminate to industrial action and the attendant suffering. In Kenya it actual does!!