Ruto Donates Hospital Mattresses To Ol Kalou Residents As Patients Sleep On The Floor-Photos

In a shocking and deeply troubling twist, President William Ruto’s government has been distributing hospital-grade mattresses to Ol Kalou residents to convince them to vote for United Democratic Alliance(UDA) candidate Samuel Muchina in the July 16th by-election, even as patients in public hospitals across the country are forced to sleep on bare floors due to a chronic shortage of the same supplies.

For the past week, thousands of Government of Kenya(GOK)-branded mattresses have been trucked into Ol Kalou constituency as part of a wider vote-buying operation that has seen the ruling party throw everything at the little-known constituency in a desperate bid to hold off Democracy for Citizens Party(DCP) candidate Sammy Ngotho.

However, not all Ol Kalou residents have been willing to play along. Some have openly rejected the mattresses and called on the government to redirect them to where they are genuinely and urgently needed, pointing specifically to Nakuru Level 5 and Nyahururu Level 5 hospitals, two facilities where patients are currently forced to purchase their own mattresses because the hospitals have none to provide.

The irony of a government distributing hospital mattresses as election bribes while actual hospital patients sleep on cold floors has not been lost on Kenyans, and the anger it has generated has been swift and widespread.

Beyond the mattresses, the government has also distributed over 20,000 subsidised gas cylinders, water tanks, boats and a wide assortment of other government-branded merchandise across the constituency, turning Ol Kalou into a showcase of what the state can do when it wants to, which apparently is only when a parliamentary seat is on the line.

The question Kenyans across the country are asking is a simple but devastating one. If Ruto can find thousands of mattresses to distribute as political bribes in Ol Kalou, why are patients in Nakuru and Nyahururu still sleeping on hospital floors?

Here are the photos of Government of Kenya-branded merchandise, including the mattresses that residents say should be in public hospitals, not in people’s homes.