DOCTORS UNION OFFICIALS ATTACKED IN BOMET

The ongoing national medical practitioners strike took a new turn when a doctor's union officials holding a meeting were attacked by rowdy youths at Bomet.

The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Doctors Union (KPMDU) officials were on Wednesday morning attacked at a Bomet hotel while holding a meeting with their counterparts from Bomet.

The doctors were roughed up by rowdy youths alleged to have accompanied the area governor Isaac Ruto who said he had gone to meet with a leader from the neighboring Narok county at the hotel concerning tribal skirmishes that have been rocking parts of Narok in the past few days.

The officials who included the Union’s Secretary General Ouma Olunga, Chairman Dr. Samuel Oroko, the South Rift branch Secretary General Davji Attela and some of the union doctors from Bomet county were holding a consultative meeting concerning the ongoing medical practitioners strike that has paralyzed medical services in all but Bomet and Mombasa counties.

A journalist from a vernacular station was also injured and his phone taken away by the seemingly organized goons during the melee.

The officials blamed the governor for the attack, claiming that he was behind the over 30 hooligans who stormed the meeting roughing the doctors including two female practitioners from a local hospital who were left with torn attire after the ordeal.The hooligans were later evicted by the hotel's security staff.

Dr. Olunga said the governor should be held responsible for the action and insisted that no amount of intimidation would scare off the doctors from pressing on with their national strike.

 “At one stage, the governor drew his gun to intimidate us but we shall continue with our role to ensure that medical practitioners countrywide all participate in the strike in solidarity with all the union members," he stated.

The officials dismissed some doctors from the region for posing as union officials and condemned them as quacks.

Reached to the governor for a comment he said that he was not aware of the doctors meeting and that he had gone to the hotel to meet Narok West MP Mr. Patrick Ntutu concerning the skirmishes that affected Emmurua Dikirr constituency in Narok county and send his condolence to bereaved families.

He denied that he drew a gun on the doctor's officials and said that he had earlier sought counsel with the union's officials but they had refused to see him.

The governor said the doctors union officials have been issuing threats to representatives of the union in the region to abscond on their duty yet Bomet doctors had agreed with the county government not to participate in the medical practitioner's national strike.

"We have not taken such threats lightly and we have put security officers on alert at every medical facility in the county.” governor Ruto said.

Bomet county chief officer in charge of medical services Dr. Bernard Sowek said some of the doctors from the county and who had joined the national officials at the meeting in the hotel would be put on disciplinary measures because the county government of Bomet was clear on its position on the national strike.

Recently the county government Bomet signed a recognition agreement on CBA with representatives of the doctors union Dr. Erick Kibet and Mr. Bernard Cheruiyot representing the National Union of Nurses raising the medical practitioner's salaries by 7-15 % for the lowest to the highest paid practitioners respectively.