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AYAH: Ghost workers causing climate change? Or is just hot air?

A society needs just three professions to prosper. Medical doctors, farmers and teachers.

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by RICHARD AYAH

News21 November 2022 - 13:19
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In Summary


  • We rely on teachers, farmers and doctors to hold society together. The work they do is a calling.
  • No country progresses without sorting out the fundamentals of health, food and education.

The Kenyan society has elevated so many occupations above the core of society, the reckless strutting politician comes to mind. They forget that all other roles are secondary supportive ones to those who are the primary producers. The primary professions are looked down upon. They are ‘poor farmers’, ‘those teachers’ or ‘ghost workers’.

If you observe behaviour, you can see some differences between the west and Africa. One such difference is our attitude towards ghosts. Watch any streaming TV and you will find many western movies where seemingly ordinary people, usually not well off, without much training, and against the odds, are on an adventure hunting down some ghosts.

Your typical African does no such thing. Faced with the possibility of a spirit in the vicinity, they look for an expert to deal with the matter. This aversion to confronting ghosts might explain why ghost workers appear to be so common.

A society needs just three professionals to prosper. Medical doctors, farmers and teachers. The doctor declares you alive at birth, dead when you die and in between these two events keeps you healthy. The farmer grows the food you need. Yes, you do have a choice to be a hunter/gatherer, but in this modern age, the idea of someone who just collects without sowing and gathers excess is corrupt, aren’t they?

The third profession is teaching. They look after knowledge and pass it on to the next generation. A lawyer might argue that they should be included among the three essential professions. Their job often is to argue.

We rely on these three professions to hold society together. The work they do is a calling. They need to be paid but, more importantly, they need to be recognised by society that the work they do is important. But there are two problems they face.

The first problem is the short-sighted approach we have to societal development. A fallacy that we can somehow advance without developing our own institutions in farming, learning, research and health. That we can borrow ideas from elsewhere and just transplant them. That is why we have a huge informal sector, where the next person copies what this person is doing and then prays for success.

The second problem is the Kenyan society has elevated so many occupations above the core of society, the reckless strutting politician comes to mind. They forget that all other roles are secondary supportive ones to those who are the primary producers. The primary professions are looked down upon. They are ‘poor farmers’, ‘those teachers’ or ‘ghost workers’.

The disassociation between them and clever us is stark. ‘They’ are not doing a good job, are a cost to us that we need to deal with. With the farmers, there is some condescending sympathy. Teachers are a cost centre. The medical doctor is just trouble. The doctor title calls for respect, but unlike farmers who do not talk much, doctors have an opinion.


One solution is to lump them together and call them junior doctors, instead of ‘my doctor’. At which point they can be treated like any other worker. Once the term worker is used, it is a small step to ‘ghost workers’.

Kenya is a religious society that respects the world beyond more than the physical one we live in. We know an African ghost is not like the one in TV cartoons where they are see-through, float on air and never eat. So, who is a ghost worker?

Farmers are all self-employed. Even though they do not produce enough food for this country, they are never labelled ghost workers. But you hardly ever see a politician sitting down with farmers, as equals, discussing. A farmers’ forum is one where they are being lectured at or waiting for a handout. Is it possible that real farmers do not exist?

Teachers and health workers are employed mostly by the state. And we are unhappy with their graduates and Kenya is an unhealthy country relative to GDP. Absenteeism from the workstation is high in the education and health sector. Despite most of these absences being authorised, they are often labelled ghost workers.

The public sector is where ghosts are found. But unlike the TV ghost, these ghosts can’t be seen, but they eat. And unlike the west where ordinary people engage ghosts and chase them away, in Kenya it is reserved for particular people to find and chase ghosts, especially the worker type of ghost. Should our leaders focus on the root causes instead of ghosts floating on hot air?

Building a thriving society is about getting the three primary professions to work. By giving them support, respect and esteeming them as key drivers of society. Not by putting them down or elevating others above them. They need decent pay, but the pay does not guarantee that their work will be done well.

Much more critical is their work environment. A farmer without proper inputs, the right technologies and fair access to markets will fail. The market whether a middleman, soko mjinga or supermarket is a salesperson for the key person, the farmer.

The teacher, struggling with CBC or inadequate university funding will fail in their calling of distilling knowledge for our children and society. Medical doctors are clever, like lawyers. Doctors divide themselves into two broad groups; public health doctors, who can prevent a lot of diseases if the investment is there, and clinical doctors, ‘we told you, but you did not listen, so the only place left for you is hospital’.

The people that create ghosts do so using a lot of hot air. They create a climate that is hostile to the ordinary citizen. It is time we saw through that. No country progresses without sorting out the fundamentals of health, food and education.

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