NAIROBI: A key office within Parliament that advises MPs on the budget and the economy now says that the perennial strikes and protests by teachers, doctors and nurses over pay is bad for Kenya's economy and for business.
The Parliamentary Budget Office said the strikes pose massive triple threat to growth because they make life expensive, scare away investors, and cripple job prospects in the private sector.
The counsel to the MPs as they consider the next national Budget is that they should not entertain calls for more pay if there is nothing tangible expected at the end of the pay rise.
The House experts also rapped the Government for flouting pay deals with the workers' unions.
"The economy cannot afford to deal with recurring lapses in production and payments with no corresponding output," the report says.
The alarm on the cost of the strikes comes at a time when the National Assembly is working on the Budget Policy Statement, a three-year forecast of the country's spending plan.
The national budget estimates for the next financial year are undergoing final drafting at the National Treasury, Parliamentary Service Commission and in the Judicial Service Commission.
It appears to be a timely warning to the august House and the political class within government not to entertain any calls for a pay rise, because it is usually around this time that public servants step up their calls for more pay.
In the report of the Budget Office seen by The Standard, the House experts on fiscal policy, tax, and economics said whenever teachers and nurses down their tools, the public is forced to seek alternatives in the private sector, where it costs more for the same service.
Parents enroll their children in private schools where learning schedules are more predictable.
"Many are the times when hard-working Kenyans and family breadwinners have lost their lives or had their health conditions worsen... This is costly to the economy in terms of decimating the labour force as well as reducing productivity because an ailing population cannot be a productive one," the Budget Office added in the report titled "Rise of the African Tiger: Budget Options for 2015-16 and the Medium Term".
The damage caused by the teachers' strike is worse because it affects the quality of people joining the labour market. The House Budget experts are emphatic that that is the reason the country ends up with "half-baked workers". If the strikes continue, the House experts warned, there will be massive brain drain.
