Treasury CS Henry Rotich has maintained that the government
can only pay hike for striking doctors.
Talks between doctors and the government hit a snag on Tuesday after the Health Ministry accused them of not being ready to negotiate in good faith.
As the boycott entered its 52nd day,
Cabinet Secretary Cleopa Mailu said they had tried their best to talk to the doctors.
In an interview on Citizen TV on Wednesday, Rotich said they had done their best and that it was time for doctors to call
off
the strike.
The government can only afford a 40 per cent increase.
I want Kenyans to understand that we are not refusing to pay doctors," he said.
"If
everybody goes on strike and I pay what they demand, what will we have in this country?
Are you ready to be taxed more, or should we borrow more to pay doctors?"
The doctors’ strike is unlikely to end before the Thursday deadline. And striking alongside the health workers are lecturers who also want a pay rise. Students have joined the strikes, making matters worse for the country that is also looking into solutions to drought.
The public has complained via social media that despite all of the problems, the primary concern seems to be the registration of voters for the August 8 general election.
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Officials of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists’ Union said
they were ready to be jailed for disobeying court orders to end the strike.
Doctors are demanding a 300 per cent pay rise, giving an intern a monthly salary of Sh325,000 and specialists close to Sh1 million monthly pay.
They have rejected all offers from the government, the last one being the 40 per cent pay rise offered by President Uhuru Kenya, which gave interns a Sh208,000 monthly salary.
The Cabinet Secretary further noted that the to be able to encourage investments and meet expenditure.
"We are borrowing to implement the budget and in view of the timelines we have, syndicated loans are much faster," he said.
"We are borrowing because we want to acquire infrastructure and encourage more investment."
The CS said the government
will raise taxes to pay debts in future but noted that
the country's
debt target does not exceed 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.
Rotich said Kenya
cannot stop importation without having the means to produce.
"There’s a benchmark that we are looking at when it comes to borrowing.
We cannot say we want to produce matchsticks and toothpicks here when there’s nobody to do it," he said.
"We might have borrowed more than previous governments but those governments haven’t done what we have."