Dear governors, you can’t be broke and imperious

Of all the things that brought shame to the image of this country this week, the sight of a medical doctor getting evicted by Mombasa County government grabbed the crown and refused to hand it back.

At a time the country is asking the government to take mental health seriously, we thank the doctor for having the mental strength to offer us an exclusive videographed tour of that house while county government officers were putting final touches to his eviction party.

Without the video, we wouldn’t have known that our health workers have been competing with rodents on who can comfortably live in a rat hole without getting swamped by crawling bugs.

He told us that he would have finished renovating that squalid habitat into a liveable home had the government not been paying them peanuts instead of cement and paint. For that, we give the government an A for their consistency in mistreating health workers at home and at work.

Five-star treatment

The Council of Governors needs to decide what they want. On the one hand, they have no qualms paying for five-star treatment at posh private hospitals while on the other they want doctors to vacate government houses and live in the clouds, as if there is any county that has built a health facility in the air.

These are the same people that once airlifted one of their own to South Africa to go see a doctor who could help remove a bandage from his nose. If you can’t even trust our health care workers to touch your nose, at least compensate them for writing you a referral letter, even if their handwriting needs revisiting.

Governors should know they aren’t telling us anything new, because even the visitor who came to Jerusalem Estate this morning knows the Government of Kenya is broke. That’s why Kenyan parents have pardoned the government for building forests instead of classrooms for their children.

When you are in broke, conventional wisdom dictates that you do as the brokers do. Brokers negotiate, they don’t threaten. Brokers convince, they don’t intimidate. You are helping no one by scaring health workers with eviction from government houses.

 These are people who have seen their colleagues die in the line of due to government negligence. Given a choice between losing their jobs and their lives, there is only one obvious option and they don’t even need to open their eyes to choose it.

Manna from heaven

Governors should learn from broke Kenyan parents currently lining up at the front office of their children’s schools to plead with the head teacher to allow their children in school as they wait for manna to fall from heaven.

That is what governors should be doing. They should be prostrating in front of health workers, begging them to allow patients in hospitals even when the government hasn’t paid them to go to work.

They should be picking up calls from the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union officials even if they are just saying hallo. Every day when the governors wake up they should send a good morning tweet to all doctors asking how they slept, and for those who were on ward rounds at night, how much fumes of laughing gas they inhaled in the lab the previous night.

You cannot be broke and catching flights like grasshoppers. Broke people don’t wear six-piece suits while fine dining with the who’s-who at exclusive clubs. Broke people don’t have a voice to issue threats.

Broke people are humble, and use empathetic words. The CoG must choose one struggle; they cannot be broke and arrogant at the same time.

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