It is unfortunate that both the National Government and the County Governments continue to mismanage, play ping pong games with the human capital (doctors, nurses, clinical officers and support staff) crucial to the delivery of quality health care to the sovereign people of Kenya.
In the midst of a raging COVID-19 pandemic killing people indiscriminately we see a National Government and County Governments playing cat and mouse games with the healthcare providers who are risking their own lives to look after those afflicted. Where do those in our public service and elected offices acquire the thick skin, insensitivity, cold heartedness, crass inhumanity, arrogance, when they occupy those offices?
Yes it is a fact we are dead broke as a nation as confessed by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani early this month but the question to be asked and answered is where ought the meagre resources still available being collected from taxes to be allocated to the health sector?
We dare say that amidst the pandemic, the cries, the dire plight of the healthcare workers there is waste graft, abuse going on of public resources perpetrated by public servants, elected leaders in their pastimes of swindling the public be it in seminars, trainings, retreats, or capacity building sessions.
In the dire financial straits that confront us as a nation the first essential duty of both our levels of Government is health provision to the citizen, second is helping to rebuild livelihoods, supporting those who have nothing to eat and then getting our children back to school.
Things in the whole world are not as ‘usual’. We cannot afford to do all things we desire to do now. We must prioritize what is essential for our collective and individual survival and health is on top and once we fix that and when we have overcome the COVID-19 pandemic we can look at the non-essentials which are pre-occupying those entrusted to govern us.
The COVID-19 pandemic remains the truest test of what quality of leadership we have as a Nation, as Counties, as Constituencies, as wards, as our public service. This leadership is totally wanting, it is performing well below average. It is drifting and it poses the greatest risk to our survival as a people.
The elected leadership, the public servants must sort out, straighten, address the Healthcare workers grievances forthwith without buck passing. The public must seriously consider coming out and mounting demonstrations at the offices of their County Governors to press home the urgency of fixing the health care workers grievances. Those problems can no longer be delayed, postponed. A disgruntled healthcare worker cannot be expected to midwife good health to anyone.