Quacks have invaded Professionalism  

Quacks have invaded professionalism in Kenya, and they are having a field day.
 
  In the building industry, quacks have completely taken over, right from drawings, architectural designs, to structural designs, bills of quantities to actual construction.

  People with no architectuaral training are busy designing flashy houses which collapse at the slightest wave of the winds. They are cheap and efficient. They know their ways with the authorities and they get their work approved with speed. They also build storey houses at great speed. The end result; they have relegated the professionals from work, and their work quality manifests itself in the many collapsing buildings across Kenya.
 
  In the road construction, people who are at best knowledgeable in selling beer, have become road engineers. They get all road tenders because they have the money and the desired connections. Professional road engineers must now do their bidding, and work under their supervision. The end result, a road that is newly built, develops pot holes before the constructor clears his equipment from the sight. Quacks!
 
  In the medical professions, the hypocratic oath and professionalism mean very little to doctors. They open clinics across the country, where they engage quacks to wait on patients. The end result is cases of negligence and wrong prescription, just because the professionals are busy chasing after big money in the five star hospitals. Quacks!
 
  The legal profession seems to top the bill. Honesty and truthfulness stands for nothing in the judiciary. Cases are unduely delayed, and magistrates and judges have forgotten the adage that justice delayed is justice denied. They talk in court as if they do not want to be heard by anybody, and when reality downs on you, judgement has been given to the highest bidder, not to the law. Quacks!
 
  Only the court of appeal has some semblence of law and order. It is s if only them know the law.
 
  If you look at how people drive in Kenya, and how the police administer the trafic rules, you shudder with rage, because all of them do not know the rules, both the matatu driver and the police. The end result is plenty of trafic offences, unroadworthy vehicles on the road and the now familiar road jams in Nairobi. Quacks managing our roads!
 
  Come to the politicians who should make for us the laws. How many laws have they passed this year, and how relevant are those laws to the common man? The bloated cabinet is even worse. Do they learn anything useful from their many trips abroad? Do they see how systems work out their? Do they see how residential houses are planned? What about the roads? Or are they just comfortable guzzling our taxes out their learning nothing? What about the promise of a lean and efficient cabinet? Quacks on the rampage!
 
  Our planners seem to have abdicated their work and left quacks in charge. How can we get it so wrong all the times as a country, yet those who are supposed to do it for us have done it so much for themselves. Where does the donor money go?
 
  The accountants are busy falsifying figures to escape the taxman, the teachers are busy running what they nowadays call Academies, our agriculturists have forgotten how to enrich our lands for better yield, and our vets forgot how to take care of our animals.
 
  Our FM stations are busy employing busy bodies yet we have trained journalists roaming the streets in search of employment. The end result, the lurid talks we are comdemned with all the times from the FM radio stations. Our TV channels are also not left behind. They play some lurid music, music that you cannot watch with your mother-in-law, or your daughter. Yet they media operates under some editorial guidance from the Editorial Director or some Managing Director. Quacks have invaded the media as well.
 
  But the most terrifying are recent stories that quacks have invaded the police force. Because instances of insecurity now choke the country, and the police whom we pay through our taxes, seem helpless in this game. It can be indeed very sad if it could be true that quacks have found their way into the police force.
 
  Professionals are frustrated, and professionalism has now been thrown to the dogs and quacks have come in to fill the void, cheaply. Very cheaply.
 
  Odhiambo T Oketch
  Komarock Nairobi