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{
    "id": 741845,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/741845/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 110,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "June 9, 2017 SENATE DEBATES 14 Sen. (Eng.) Muriuki",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. I stand to second this Motion. In seconding it, let me, first of all, start by commending the work of this Committee. I was a member of this Committee. It is one of those few occasions where a mediation Committee between this House and the National Assembly has come to a fairly cordial conclusion. I would urge this House to adopt this report. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we have had many occasions where Bills originate from this House and when they are send to the National Assembly, we hear of petty arguments being advanced by our colleagues in that House. Those arguments sometimes are driven by forces outside Parliament. I would urge the incoming Parliament to desist from allowing outside forces to interfere with its legislative work. Mr. Speaker, Sir, currently we are in a health crisis because of the strike by nurses. Prior to their strike, we had the strike by doctors for more than three months. This strike by nurses is not about to end anytime soon. Having been in legislation for sometime representing a constituency for some time and seeing how medical services operate, especially in the grassroots level in medical health centres and level 4 hospitals; it is wananchi who feel pinch of this strike. There has been a back and forth approach of throwing the buck from the Council of Governors (CoGs) to the national Government and so on. The national Government seems not prepared properly to tackle a crisis of this magnititude. Currently, we are seeing the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of the Health indulging in endless discussions while our people continue to suffer. The national Government pretends to be the saviour. However, in the real sense, no one wants to take up responsibility fully so that we can take care of our medical personnel. My suggestion is that we should revisit Article 248 of the Constitution which sets out various independent commissions and create a Medical Workers Service Commission which will take care of the wellbeing of medical personnel. The service maybe within the County, but like we do with the teachers where we have the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), a teacher can work in any part of this country without necessarily having to be employed by this county or that county. This commission can deal with the transfer of medical personnel and so forth. I foresee a situation where if we had a commission dealing with the medical workers both the doctors and the nurses and other people in the medical fraternity, probably, we would be closer to having a more harmonized situation of medical workers. Right now, we see a number of governors dealing with their medical personnel independently because of frustrations. They are proposing to pay their nurses or doctors in their counties better than their counterparts in other counties. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the harmonization which was supposed to be done by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) was never done. This passing of the buck, I believe would come to an end. I believe one day we will have a harmonized system where the medical workers will work under one commission. At the same time when devolution started we had very many cases of doctors being posted in some counties, but county Assemblies had issues with them. Some rejected them on the basis of ethnicity or hailing from this and that county and so on. If we had one umbrella body, it would oversee the transfer of a doctor from one county or level 5 to level 6 facility without much noise being made. We know some"
}