Doctors have been on strike since December last year, demanding the implementation of a 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement awarding them a 300 per cent pay rise which has been contested by the government.
Speaking during a tour of Kiambu County on Saturday, the Head of State said that Kenyans were suffering and doctors should recognise this fact.
He emphasised the need for them to put patriotism first before striving for their interests.
“In our hospitals, we have been able to install X-ray machines, Dialysis machines and even others in the short time that we have been in power,” he said.
“It is in this regard that I want to appeal to doctors to return to work so that the suffering of Kenyans can stop,” he stated, but say if the government was willing to meet the doctors’s demands.
Doctors have been on strike since December last year, demanding the implementation of a 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement awarding them a 300 per cent pay rise which has been contested by the government.
Matters were complicated further when the Employment and Labour Relations Court declared the CBA illegal, and ordered the doctors’ union officials to commence negotiations with the government in a bid to find a solution.
But the doctors union officials have been unwilling to re-negotiate the CBA, insisting that it has to be implemented resulting to continued suffering by Kenyans who cannot afford seeking medication in private hospitals.
Church leaders are the latest entrants to the stalled talks and have been racing against time engaging the government and the doctors’ union officials on a return-to-work formular which should be tabled in the Appeals Court on Tuesday.
Similar efforts by the Central Organisations of Trade Unions, Law Society of Kenya and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) failed after the doctors union officials insisted on having their CBA implemented.
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