Author: IGIHE

{Nurses have boycotted work in some parts of the county to protest what they say is a breach of a collective bargaining agreement they signed with the government.}

The Kenya National Union of Nurses (Knun) had directed all its 45,000 members to strike starting Monday morning until the CBA is signed and implemented.

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Services stalled in Kakamega and Vihiga counties as the health workers kept off work.

In Vihiga, all nursing services were paralysed as the caregivers met at Vihiga County Referral Hospital in Mbale and officially launched their boycott.

Patients were stranded at various health facilities, with many being caught unawares by the industrial action.

Kakamega Knun branch chairman Renson Bulunya and his Vihiga counterpart Caleb Maloba separately declared the start of the strike.

They said they want effected the CBA agreement that awarded each nurse a Sh12,000 allowance beginning January this year, an amount that was expected to rise to Sh20,000 in July.

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“The government promised to sign the treaty in December last year but they have reneged on the promise,” said Mr Bulunya.

Mr Maloba said the government had failed to register the CBA in court and implement it.

“County governments have reneged on this and yet the implementation span was set for March 2. This is June, three months later. We will only resume duty after the CBA is implemented.”

In Kakamega County, doctors were forced to work with pharmacists as they struggled to attend to patients.

The striking workers kicked out student nurses attached to Kakamega General Hospital in a bid to make their grievances heard.

A patient at Kakamega General Hospital, Nancy Soita, had brought her 10-year-old son for treatment.

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The child had a broken leg.

“I have had to help the doctor apply a plaster on my son’s leg because nurses are not working,” she told the Nation.

In Kisii, the caregivers took to the streets of Kisii town to demand action from the county government.

In Samburu, a crisis was looming after caregivers boycotted work.

Samburu County Referral Hospital was among the worst hit by the strike.

Some 23 critically ill patients were referred to Mediheal Hospital in Nakuru, Wamba Mission Hospital and other private facilities for urgent care.

EVACUATION

Ambulances, private cars, matatus and boda bodas were used to evacuate the invalids.

The outpatient section of the referral hospital remained deserted, with patients being turned away by security guards.

Cattle took advantage of the empty space, with many sheltering and chewing the cud in the corridors.

In Mombasa, the strike took off at noon after a series of meetings called by union officials in the morning.

A spot check by the Nation at Coast Provincial General Hospital found patients and their relatives waiting to be attended to in vain.

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Esther Mkai, who visited the facility at around 7am, said her patient had not been attended to and instead wa issued with a discharge note.

“My patient is at ward eight. I went there early only for her to give me a note,” she said.

“The nurses in charge were asking people to leave. We are wondering where we are going with them, because they are forcing us out and my patient is yet to recover.”

But speaking in a briefing at Public Health Department offices in Mwembe-Tayari, Health Executive Binti Omar said county officials were not aware of patients being evicted from the hospital.

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“The union in Mombasa has not issued any statement informing their nurses not to go to work,” she said.

“What we know is that nurses in all our hospitals are at their stations.”

But the job boycott failed to take off in Nyeri.

Operations went on as usual at Nyeri Referral Hospital, with new patients being admitted

Knun branch secretary Beatrice Nduati, however, insisted the nurses were on strike.

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Operations at Nyeri Referral Hospital were not interrupted even as Knun officials insisted the strike was on.

Patients were still being admitted in the wee hours of Monday morning.

The hospital administration said no patients had been transferred to private hospitals in relation to the looming boycott.

“We are still working and no one has notified me of a strike,” said Silas Njoroge, the hospital medical superintendent.

“Everything is running smoothly.”

But Knun branch secretary Beatrice Nduati said they had been instructed to down their tools.

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“We want the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) signed. Nothing but the CBA,” she said.

The county’s nurses recently ended another strike that started on May 1 over under-staffing and lack of promotions.

The industrial action ended after the county government delivered promotion letters to the nurses two weeks ago.

In Karatina, operations were affected at Karatina Sub-County Hospital, with services being delivered to outpatients only.

Residents who spoke to the Nation said the government should intervene and end the crisis before lives are lost.

“We always get frustrated when nurses and doctors are out of their work stations because a huge percentage of us cannot afford medical services in private hospitals, ” said Joseph Njane.

Source:Daily Nation

{Riven by lawlessness, corruption and economic failure, the beleaguered country could fall back into civil war at any time.}

When he writes his court rulings, Justice Emile Dhekana buys his own paper, pens, staples and carbon-copy sheets. Then he asks for a cash payment from whichever side will win the ruling.

Justice Dhekana says he cannot support his family on his monthly salary of $600 (U.S.). So, like other judges here, he extracts money from the parties in the cases before him. He tells them he needs the payment for his cellphone costs or office supplies, though he admits it’s mostly for his family expenses. “It’s not legal, but we have to do it,” he said.

The court system in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, like most other state functions, is close to collapse. “It’s a catastrophe,” Justice Dhekana said. “We don’t even have a budget to run our office. To get money, we have to hassle the people in our cases.”

The prolonged and brutal wars in eastern Congo have receded in recent years, but a near-total absence of state authority is still blighting the country, leaving it in jeopardy of further eruptions of violence and chaos. As it lurches through political and economic crises, Congo remains a dysfunctional and destabilizing factor in one of Africa’s most volatile regions.

Here in eastern Congo, only a few armed militias are still raiding villages in the remote forests, largely contained by troops. But conflict still rages in the central region of Kasai, where more than 500 people have been killed in the past five months in clashes between Congolese security forces and an opposition militia. Two United Nations investigators were among those killed, and UN peacekeepers have discovered dozens of mass graves in the region.

Almost 1.3 million people have fled Kasai because of the fighting. A third of the region’s health clinics have been forced to close, and about 400,000 children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition, the UN says.

At the national level, President Joseph Kabila is clinging to office after 16 years in power, despite the end of his legal mandate last December. His actions have triggered a political and constitutional crisis, with elections delayed and protesters shot dead by police. The political stalemate, combined with weak prices for Congo’s mineral exports, has left the economy in disarray. Congo’s currency has plummeted, food prices have soared, and public-sector salaries are deteriorating in real terms.

The national crisis has raised tensions across the country. A recent poll of 2,301 people in Congo, conducted by a U.S. research group and a Congolese polling agency, found that a strong majority expects strife in the country within months, and 69 per cent believe Mr. Kabila should have resigned in December.

“The combination of political uncertainty, predatory state institutions and low commodity prices is contributing to an increasingly toxic situation,” the International Crisis Group, an NGO based in Brussels, wrote in a recent commentary.

In another sign of the government’s growing dysfunction and disorder, more than 4,000 inmates escaped from a maximum-security prison in the capital, Kinshasa, in mid-May. It was the biggest prison break in Congo’s history. Two days later, another 70 prisoners escaped from jail in another part of the country. The government refused to acknowledge the full extent of the Kinshasa jailbreak for days.

Ituri province, in eastern Congo, is a microcosm of the country and its woes. It is rich in natural resources, with vast amounts of gold and timber. It gained autonomy in 2015 as one of the new provinces created in a decentralization plan. Yet it remains paralyzed by rampant corruption and lawlessness, a crumbling government, violent crime and banditry and a desperate lack of state revenue.

Like most provinces in this sprawling country, Ituri receives little help from faraway Kinshasa. The provincial capital, Bunia, is shrouded in darkness at night, except for a few dim streetlights. Its residents have little electricity or running water.

Pierre-Claver Bedidjo, a member of the Ituri legislature, said the province is impoverished because the government fails to collect taxes from the booming trade in gold, timber and other goods that cross the nearby Ugandan border.

“ Ituri is one of the provinces with the richest resources,” he said. “There should be enough money for water, roads, schools and hospitals. But officials are putting the money in their own pockets. Our resources are not benefiting the people.”

The collapse is most visible on the roads. Even on major routes, cars must crawl along the potholed and rutted dirt roads at 10 or 20 kilometres an hour. When it rains, a lack of drainage means the roads turn into raging torrents, with cars up to their axles in water. For the privilege of driving in these appalling conditions, motorists are routinely charged a $10 road tax – a huge amount in a country where many people earn less than a dollar a day. This tax revenue often vanishes into private pockets before it reaches any government coffers.

On the main highway running west from Bunia, gangs of young men throw logs onto the road as makeshift barriers. Then they extract money from passing motorists. The police ignore the barricades or seem powerless to stop them.

It’s part of a broader pattern of lawlessness that cripples the Congolese state at all levels. Tonnes of gold and truckloads of timber are smuggled out of the country by politically connected gangs. Tankers of fuel and convoys of new cars are brought into the country without taxation, sometimes accompanied by police vehicles to ensure that nobody will dare question them at the border. Only a tiny fraction of the revenue reaches the government.

Corruption plagues the police and the army, who demand bribes from villagers in exchange for defending them from rebel militias. “Instead of protecting the people, they harass them,” said Augustin Kangamina, a human-rights activist in Ituri. “If you don’t pay, you’re tortured or beaten.”

The graft reaches down to the lower levels of the state. At Bunia’s airport, officials demand cash for the routine processing of a visitor’s passport or health documents.

Not surprisingly, the prisons are corrupt and badly overcrowded. Luc Malembe, jailed for a month in Bunia’s central prison in December for participating in a protest against the President, said he and four fellow prisoners had to pay a $600 bribe to a powerful gang of inmates for the right to sleep on a floor indoors. Those who could not pay were forced to sleep outside on the ground near the toilets. The prison, designed to hold 200 inmates, now holds as many as 1,300 and has so little food that some inmates are severely malnourished, Mr. Malembe said. “It was horrible. We were shocked.”

Mr. Malembe is a member of Lucha, a national protest movement founded in 2012 by university graduates who were spurred by social and economic grievances such as unemployment. Last month it led protests against Ituri’s governor. Despite frequent arrests and threats against its leaders, the movement has broad public support across Congo, polls show. “We had only 10 members when we began and now we have thousands,” Mr. Malembe said.

Back at the office of Bunia’s judges, there is no electricity, except for a small solar panel, and the clerk has to use a typewriter, Justice Dhekana says. They even had to buy their own chairs until UN peacekeepers donated some furniture.

Every year the judges write a report to the national government, explaining their needs. “Nothing ever happens,” Justice Dhekana said.

He tries to protect his ethics by asking for money only from the side that he knows will win the court case. But other judges ask for money from both sides, he says, despite the fact this might influence their decision if one side gives more than the other.

Source:The Globe and Mail

{The collective of lawyers grouped into “Justice for Burundi” reports that at the end of May 2017, 98 new warrants have been sent to the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court-ICC. “This brings to nearly 800 cases of warrants that were entrusted to the collective”, says Armel Niyongere, a human rights defender.}

He says the file includes cases of sexual violence, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture, assassinations, etc. “We continue to work hand in hand with the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Burundi to bring investigators and get them connected with various direct eyewitnesses who may provide complete and specific information on crimes against humanity committed in Burundi”, says Niyongere.

Jean Baptiste Baribonekeza, the chairman of the National Commission for Human Rights-CNIDH said about 720 people were killed, over 80 others tortured since Burundi has plunged into the current crisis in April 2015. He was referring to the current human rights situation after two years of crisis in the country. “Between 700 and 800 people have been arbitrarily arrested in different areas of the country but some of them were released thanks to the intervention of CNDIH”, said Baribonekeza.

Baribonekeza said the human rights situation deteriorated at the beginning of 2015 but has improved as time went by. “Considering the situation between 2015 and 2016, there has been some improvement in 2017”, he said.

The human rights activists advance a figure of more than 2,000 people killed since April 2015, more than 8,000 imprisoned and thousands of Burundians who have been forced into exile fearing for their security. UNHCR recently reported that since April 2015, some 410,000 refugees and asylum seekers have been forced to flee their homes.

Source:Iwacu

{An Atlanta-based Kenyan man succumbed to injuries Sunday morning after he was shot by a gunman while working at a petrol station in Birmingham, Alabama, in the United States.}

Mike Mulwa, 29, was shot following an altercation on Saturday night at a Citgo filling station, located on 9800 block of Parkway East in Birmingham.

A statement from local police said that officers from the East Precinct responded to an emergency call at around 11.30pm on Saturday and found two people trying to resuscitate the victim.

“Mulwa was rushed to the University of Alabama trauma hospital where he underwent surgery but died from the gunshot wound at 4.30am on Sunday,” read the statement.

Investigators believe robbery was the motive.

ALTERCATION

By Sunday evening, detectives were still investigating the shooting and asked anyone with any information to call the police.

“Investigators are sure an altercation took place inside the location and at some point the victim was shot,” said Sgt. Bryan Shelton, the lead detective.

“People should be able to go to work and return home without being the victim of a crime. Our investigators will work hard to bring this family answers and bring the killer to justice,” added Shelton.

A family member told the Nation that Mr Mulwa was the founder of the #254 clothes label and the proprietor of the #254 skill-wear fashion brand. The Kenyan community in Atlanta was shocked by the news of Mr Mulwa’s death.

“His wife, who is expectant with their third child, is in disbelief and is totally saddened by the news,” said Chege Maina, a close family friend.

SECURITY CAMERAS

By Sunday evening, detectives were still piecing together evidence from the scene of the crime, including reviewing footage from security cameras.

Mr Mulwa lived in Atlanta but worked in Alabama, according to family members.

Family members told a local TV station that he had called a friend to say he had been shot and asked him to call 911.

Mr Mulwa’s parents, Violent Mueni and Councillor Ngangi, and his only surviving brother, Vincent Mutuku, live in Kenya.

He moved to the US in 2008, and worked at various department stores in Atlanta before landing a job with Shaw Industries.

His family described him as soft-spoken and kind.

He leaves behind a widow, two children and an unborn baby.

Source:Daily Nation