Baringo Referral Hospital medical superintendent Stephen Kalya was arrested on Friday over poor sanitation at the facility.
The hospital management is accused of disposing human and biomedical waste without the required effluent discharge license issued by Nema.
“We had allowed the facility up to midday on Friday to apply for the EDL but they did not keep their promise so we had to enforce the arrest,” Nema national deputy director Betty Nzioka said.
She said the hospital could not rise Sh125,000 for the annual license backdated to 2015.
Kalya said he was yet to receive development allocation from the county government this year.
“If you can check our accounts now we are totally broke. I don’t have any money in my own pocket now because I am on loans, so I beg you officers from Nema to kindly bear with me,” he said.
He was supported by the county director of medical services Garishom Abakalwa.
On Thursday, Abakalwa promised to pay for the license by Friday noon.
Kalya's pleas that he was handling hundreds of patients in the hospital besides serving as administrator fell on deaf ears.
“Arresting me now is like bringing down and closing the whole county referral hospital, so please don’t do such an embarrassing act to me,” he said.
The security officers frog matched the doctor to Kabarnet police station to record a statement.
“I will resign my position if this is what it means to be a medical superintendent in such a facility and, by the way, you people don’t know how much I sacrifice daily in making sure things run here,” Kalya said.
The unkempt hospital operates without an incinerator to burn biomedical solid waste.
