No country will ever develop on our kind of model

The strike threat by Kenyan medical workers in the midst of coronavirus pandemic is grave. As we wait to engage in a life and death struggle with the disease, we cannot afford even a single disgruntled medic.

They say they do not have enough protective gear which puts their health and lives, and those of their families, in danger. They also say their claim to certain allowances has been disregarded.

Provision of protective gear is both a legal and ethical right. Nurses and other medical staff should also be accorded reasonable terms of employment given their stressful and high risk work. These basic provisions should also extend to police officers and other front line personnel.

The threat by nurses comes in the midst of allegations that money donated by the World Bank to fight the virus was being spent on non-essential goods and services. There are further allegations of theft of funds made available to the ministry of health. The veracity or otherwise of these claims is a matter for relevant arms of government to establish. What is a matter of fact is that the demon of corruption has always been alive and very healthy in the ministry. Some few years ago, the ministry lost a whopping Ksh5 billion ($50 million) in shady deals which included procurement of shipping containers passed off as mobile clinics.

The nurses’ strike threat also raises questions about the lopsided way our society is organised. We treat MPs like small monarchs, when what they really require is a reasonable basic wage and an allowance to facilitate engagement with constituents.

The taxpayer underwrites their first class travel, including travel to the World Cup in Russia where we did not even have a participating team. We sent a 100 of them to a conference in the US to which rich countries like Japan sent a handful.

At Parliament’s parking bay, you would think Hollywood stars are in the visitors’ gallery to listen to erudite and moral arguments about how to end poverty in Kenya.

Our Members of County Assemblies now have frequent flier privileges.

Governors have huge entertainment allowances. Whom they mostly entertainment will be left to the imagination.

Travel by the presidency and cabinet consumes millions. We give retired or retiring billionaires pensions the Queen of England would be envious of.

Problems facing nurses in the midst of this pandemic call attention to two issues which, if not urgently addressed, pose an existential threat to the Kenyan nation-state: The demons of theft that reside in every government department, and the lopsided nature of our society which takes food from the poor in order to fatten the rich.

There is a more fundamental ailment that afflicts our society—lack of basic decency: the sense to forego buying another mansion using funds meant to alleviate poverty because it is immoral.

No country has ever developed using that model of corruption, lop-sidedness, and lack of basic decency.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.