The standoff between the Kiambu County government and the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) continues to get uglier, even as Governor Kimani Wamatangi remains unshaken.
Speaking in Kiambaa on Sunday, October 6, 2025, during a public engagement, Wamatangi said that his administration won’t be intimidated by outside forces, adding that he does not run his government through coercion and that he cannot pay and will not pay deserters.
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“All the shenanigans you are hearing out there about our hospitals are imaginary. It should dawn on those framing them that we have no money to pay people who have not worked for it,” he said.
This comes amid a conundrum over the provision of health services in the county’s facilities.
However, Wamatangi maintains that there is no health crisis in the county and that claims of the same are a fabrication of the union and a section of politicians.
“Imagine giving people all this money and yet they refuse to go to work. Doctors shouldn’t think that they are greater gods or that their profession is superior to others,” he scoffed.
The governor revealed that out of the county’s seven million shillings recurrent expenditure, five million shillings go towards the payment of medical staff and other medical matters.
Hell-bent on CBA?
On the said death of tens of infants, Kiambu County Medical Department Chief Officer Patrick Nyaga weighed in on the matter, accusing KMPDU of inflating medical data for ulterior motives.
“It is immoral, unethical, and highly unprofessional to fabricate deaths that never occurred to distort Medical data,” he said at the Kiambu Level 5 hospital recently.
Nyaga further accused the union of “creating imaginary babies, killing them, and then publicising the same”.
On its part, KMPDU said that the strike has led to preventable deaths, particularly among newborns.
The union secretary general, Davji Atellah, claims that the County has refused to sign a non-victimization clause that protects striking doctors from punitive actions.
Atellah also raised complaints over delayed salaries and unpaid arrears, failure to remit statutory deductions like the Social Health Authority (SHA).
“The county is not honoring doctors’ CBA agreements, no promotions and career stagnation, as well as poor working conditions and excessive workloads,” he said.
KMDU has since threatened to escalate the strike by calling for a nationwide industrial action until Wamatangi gives in to the union’s demands.
