Nairobi, May 9 -- The doctors' strike has ended. It is a good conjuncture to discuss the big issues around frequent strikes in the public sector and how to prevent them in essential services.

The big problem is that the government is acting as if it was not aware that labour, like other factors of production - land, labour and capital- is priced according to that principle in economics known as scarcity.

We read in economics textbooks that labour, like any factor of production, is priced according to the dictates of supply and demand and that the number of years a worker spends in school and in training must be factored when determining wages and emoluments.

If we accept that the skills are scarce and concede that it takes close to 10 ...