The hiring of 100 doctors from Cuba to come and work in the country while our own doctors are under paid is a bad idea by the government.
Our doctors are still raising complaints of poor working conditions and failure by the government to fully implement their requirements in the CBA that was put in place a couple of months back.
The Cuban doctors will be taking home Sh800,000 every month, which is more than almost all doctors we have ha over the years and way more than top-ranking government officials.
Despite the fact that the doctors will be taxed by their own government, our government, under the stewardship of President Uhuru Kenyatta, should have put the money to better use.
Instead of paying the doctors such a hefty sum, the government should have used that money to improve the working environmet of our doctors.
The hefty sum allocated for each of the 100 doctors should have been used to purchase medical equipment for example, to cope with the rigors and requirements of the ever-evolving world.
The medics have been allocated job group 'S' which is a bit discriminative because we have local doctors with just aboit the same level of expertise but have never really reached that level and eve if they are grouped at that, they do not get to earn that amount of salary.
What's more, the doctors earn more than both the National majority and Minority leaders who take home around Sh765,000.
The government will be using at least 2 billion on the welfare of the doctors including their travel expenses and other aforementioned expenditure.
The doctors will enjoy; besides the hefty salary- furnished homes, catered for air salaries during annual leaves, paid utilities and trasport.
With the country still reeling from the prolonged electioneering period and subsequent inflation that hurt the economy, the government should look closely into its expenditure and avoid relying so much on loans and aids.
It could be true that the Finance has no funds as we have already noticed in the casual and sluggish response to the evaluation of the recently ended lecturers strike. But what is in it if the government still has 'surplus' to spend on importing doctors?
With corruption aon the rise and various sectors being hit with scandal after scandal all which involving several billions, it remains to be seen how well the government will deal with the pressure of having the doctors around for the contracted period of time as well as the mounting pressure from our own doctors who will obviously want their issues sorted.
The doctors should really not have been brought into the country especially taking into consideration as well that there will obviously arise a communication barrier as well as some form of animosity from staff and clients as many will not be as free as they would have been around a local medic.