Medics wrong on ministerial slot
A section of the media quoted the Kenya Medical Association as saying it would push to a person with a medical background to be appointed the Cabinet Secretary in the Department/Ministry of Health in the next Government.
The assumption is that a Cabinet Secretary with a medical background is likely to provide the country with top-notch health services.
However, KMA is mistaken. Ability to effectively manage health issues, institutions and functions does not depend on knowledge of medicine. Technical knowledge such as medicine is supremely relevant in a theater, a ward, in diagnosing ailments and prescribing a course of treatment to them.
But managing health institutions — and a country’s health sector requires competencies that have little do with medical skills.
It requires leadership and management ability.
It requires men and women with the ability to decide the right things to do to address the issue of access to affordable and quality healthcare for all regardless of social status and geographical location.
It requires men and women who are able to think analytically; those who can view the whole issue of healthcare facing this country — and cut down the issues involved into manageable components and provide long range solutions to the problems.
It is about managing the scarce financial, material and human resources in ways that you get the most out of it.
Health challenges
Like any organisation, managing the health sector requires one to have a catholic mind, inspire confidence in all those working as health professionals and secure the co-operative support of all other stakeholders.
Indeed, reliance on medical knowledge as the main pillar for competence is counterproductive. The challenges facing the health sector has little to do with medical knowledge. Kenya has trained and continues to train health professionals, but the challenge has been how to make the millions of citizens access quality healthcare.
Management of the sector means ensuring efficient and effective health services so that every Kenyan is able to access affordable and quality service.
It involves setting goals and having a vision that will define all operations that go into meeting the minimum standards of healthcare a growing economy such as ours is entitled to.
Possession of a medical degree does not, ipso facto, mean, you have all the qualities of leadership and management to provide policy direction to the health sector.
In fact, the danger is that a medical doctor who has never interested himself in questions of leadership and management is likely to become what the Director/CEO of the Kenya Institute of Administration, Prof Margaret Kobia calls a functional manager.
A leader of an organisation must be a general manager — able to see an organisation from a holistic perspective — to provide leadership to all functional areas that, together, define its effectiveness.
A brilliant doctor does not translate into a brilliant CEO of a health institution or a ministry of Health.
Those wishing to provide effective leadership to a health institution, at whatever level of leadership, have made it point to cultivate competencies in other areas.
They have developed interest in management as a discipline — bought and read excellent books and journals on management and leadership.
I met a few such doctors at the Kenya Institute of Administration during the Strategic Leadership Development Programme Course recently. The few, particularly, young doctors surprised me as they have even read literature on military organisation and leadership.
Yes. We need doctors at the helm of some of our strategic public institutions such as ministries, departments and Government agencies, but the appointing authority will be interested in you as the CEO or Cabinet Secretary of this or that department not because you can successfully operate on a patient.
{Kennedy Buhere, Via Email}
Human error to blame for accidents
Continuous news of grisly road accidents are sickening. The death toll is alarming and we all must find the will to contain it fast. The Government, citizens and stakeholders must collectively take measures to rid our roads of this menace.
Most accidents often involve heavy trucks, trailers and public service vehicles. Human error, mostly caused by fatigue and haste to meet set targets, is among the major causes of accidents that need our urgent attention.
Articulated and long distance trucks should not be allowed to move past 6pm to free our roads of giant sluggish vehicles when visibility is impaired.
The traffic department has to ensure speed governors are not fitted on matatus alone but also on lorries. This will dissuade drivers from reckless driving and overtaking on inclines and blind spots.
Dangerous drivers
Many of our roads are narrow, unmarked and without traffic signs thus demanding extra caution while driving. It is imperative that the ministry of Roads expand these roads and consider building one-way traffic lanes to avoid head on collisions and allow free movement at designated speeds.
The introduction of a motorised mechanical unit to make random checks on vehicle braking systems, steering columns, tie-rod ends and ball joints will get the ramshackle off the roads. Vehicle owners will be forced to maintain them or face deterrent heavy penalties.
Drivers who work very long hours without rest are a danger. The Government should consider introducing the equivalent of work tickets for PSVs and commercial vehicles to monitor drivers’ working hours.
Driving licences should be issued after thorough training from approved driving schools. The ease with which half-baked drivers and riders get licences is alarming.
It is not enough to be given statistics of death tolls on our roads by the traffic department once in a while, we demand action.
{Alexander Chagema, Kakamega}
When will we ever get it right on measures to curb road carnage? We are losing too many precious lives on our roads and travelling has become scary.
When roads were bad and bumpy, we blamed their condition for accidents, now do we blame the roads for being to smooth and slippery? Let’s check our mannerism.
{Justin Osey, Mombasa}
Kikwete’s ‘strange’ act a step forward
News that Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete sacked six of his Cabinet members over corruption allegations must be stifling the feathers of all the other East African Community presidents.
With most of the ministerial appointments in the Cabinets of all the regional governments filled with both tribal and political cronies, what Kikwete did is really against the ‘spirit’ of what has come to be known — to the detriment of our regional economies — as ‘consultative politics’ where thieves of public coffers are kept in their jobs to protect and maintain tribal voting blocs.
EAC leaders may be considering Kikwete’s action a ‘very bad’ example, but, it must be noted that the voting pattern in Tanzania is not the same as those of all other EAC countries where tribal chiefs are appointed to the Cabinet to appease various tribes and interest groups.
In Kenya, sacking, for example, a corrupt Mijikenda, Maa or Arab minister would mean that the groups are targeted for political extinction.
The corruption allegations against the sacked Tanzanian ministers would pale in comparison to the billions of shillings lost in graft cases of Goldenberg, AngloLeasing, De La Rue, NSSF and now NHIF. Ironically, most individuals mentioned in these scandals are still holding government offices.
Kikwete’s ‘abnormal’ act is welcome and would go along way in reshaping the regional politics and governance.
{Emmanuel Ngala, Malindi}
Preserve value of honorary degrees
Without necessarily referring to Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s award of honorary doctorate degree from an American university, there is a worrying feeling that world universities have embraced a disturbing culture of dishing out the degrees to senior government officials, politicians, businessmen and the moneyed as opposed to the original purpose: Honouring achievement.
The prestige of doctorate degrees is being washed down and soon will lose its significance. Going by recent happenings world over, doctorate degrees will soon be seen to be a preserve of the affluent at the expense of the deserving.
{Justin Osey Peter, Mombasa}
I join other Kenyans in congratulating Raila on being honoured with a doctorate degree from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in the US.
I, too, commend local and international universities for recognising leadership talent among our politicians. For long, politicians had been left out in these honours.
Once again, congratulations to all those honoured.
{Timothy Turunya, Malindi}
