Kenya seeks to hire docs from Tanzania

Dar es Salaam. The Kenyan government has contacted Tanzania over its plans to hire doctors as the neighbouring country grapples with the three-month long strike by its medics.

However, doctors in Tanzania are opposed to the move.

Tanzania’s minister for Health, Community Development, Gender, Children and the Elderly, Ms Ummy Mwalimu, has confirmed to The Citizen on Saturday that Kenya has indeed made the request but the she refused to divulge details.

“Yes… [But]…please don’t ask further questions,’’ was the minister’s response in a text message when The Citizen sought clarifications over reports that were circulating in the media regarding Kenya’s move. The doctors’ strike enters its 96th day today.

However, the Medical Association of Tanzania (Mat) through its chairman-elect, Dr Elisha Osati, said yesterday that they were opposed to the move, emphasizing that they were only ready for the move after the strike--not now.

“Mat isn’t supporting Kenyan government’s plan of employing Tanzanian doctors. Unless this is done once the strike is over,” said Dr Osati on his official Twitter page.

According to Kenyan media, country’s Council of Governors chair Peter Munya announced on Thursday that the Kenyan government has embarked on plans to hire medics from Tanzania, Ethiopia and Cuba in the next three weeks to replace the striking doctors.

This development comes hardly a week after Tanzanian doctors, through Mat, asked the government to hire the over 1,500 newly licensed doctors who are still unemployed.

During a press conference held on Friday last week, the chairman of Mat, Dr Obadia Nyongole, told reporters that for over the past two years, the government has not hired any of the newly licensed doctors.

However, Health minister Ummy Mwalimu is on record as saying that the government “cannot put all the newly licensed doctors on its payroll’’, citing financial constraints.

Employment in most public institutions in Tanzania have been put on hold since early last year following government crackdown on ghost workers.

Yet, speaking late last year, Ms Mwalimu told a conference of doctors in Dar es Salaam that out of the 1,000 doctors who graduate each year, it is only 500 who can secure employment with the government.

The doctors in Kenya are demanding a minimum gross wage of Ksh447,000 (Sh9,700,000) and Ksh1,276,000 (Sh27,000,000) per month (inclusive of allowances) for the lowest and highest paid doctor, respectively. This is a 300 per cent increment from Ksh195,910 (Sh4,260,000) and Ksh396,060 (Sh8,600,000), respectively (Daily Nation NewsPlex Dec 13th, 2016 ).

In Tanzania, the gross salary of a general medical practitioner is about Sh1,400,000 while nurses take home an average salary of Sh500,000.

On Wednesday the Kenyan government said it had lost patience with the slow pace of talks to end doctors’ strike and ordered that the medics resume duty immediately.

President Uhuru Kenyatta directed county service boards and the Health ministry in Kenya to take disciplinary measures against all doctors who would fail to heed the order to resume duty.

Despite government withdrawing a deal negotiated during mediation, the doctors now say that they cannot be coerced and bulldozed into returning to work without inking the negotiated deal, local media in Kenya reports. Kenya’s Health Cabinet Secretary Cleopa Mailu has expressed disappointment in the doctors’ Union for rejecting the offer that had been proposed by government.