The apparent grandstanding between the Kiambu county government and the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (KMPDU) has continued to confuse the nation by the day. Conflicting information regarding the provision of health services in the county’s health facilities in the past four months has caused uncertainties and confusion among patients. The county government 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.
Wamatangi says that his administration won’t be intimidated by outside forces, adding that he doesn’t run his government through coercion and that he can’t pay and won’t pay deserters. “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.
The governor revealed that out of the county’s Ksh 7m recurrent expenditure, Ksh 5m goes towards the payment of medical staff and other medical matters. “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,” said the visibly irate governor who spoke in Kiambaa during a public engagement on Monday, October 6, 2025.
On alleged death of tens of infants, Kiambu county medical department Chief Officer Dr. 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 in order to distort medical data,” he said at the Kiambu Level 5 hospital recently.
Nyaga further accuses the union of “creating imaginary babies, killing them, and then publicising the same.” The union alleges that the strike has led to preventable deaths, particularly among newborns. KMPDU secretary general Dr. Davji Atellah claims that the county has refused to sign a non-victimization clause that protects striking doctors from punitive actions.
The union is also complaining of delayed salaries and unpaid arrears, failure to remit statutory deductions (like insurance, SHA), county not honoring doctors’ CBA agreements, no promotions and career stagnation, as well as poor working conditions and excessive workloads. Atellah has since threatened to escalate the strike by calling for a nationwide industrial action until Wamatangi gives in to the union’s demands.
