Nairobi — The newspaper front-page pictures of our burly municipal councillors tearing into chapatis and nyama choma at a slum kiosk were meant to instil confidence in a population faced with the sweeping scourge of cholera. Momentarily, they could have achieved this feat, but to so many inhabitants of this tourism-dependent coastal town, they did not.

It was viewed for what it is -- a clever public relations exercise by an administration that has failed to achieve basic public health standards to stave off diseases that can be avoided through pure commonsense.

What is as sure as the next monsoon is that as soon as we have another session of rains, another cholera outbreak will occur at the same dinghy areas as it has in the past 30 or 40 years.

It is easier to preach behavioural change in a society faced with HIV/Aids and get results than to "PR" away cholera when raw sewage flows next to eateries and toilets dug next to water wells. One does not need a degree in medicine to realise that Mombasa continues to sit on a public health bombshell by refusing to address basic sanitation issues.

The stinging criticism in Parliament of the minister for Public Health and Sanitation by irate legislators tired of the "business as usual" responses to matters of life and death was extremely befitting. Even as the minister continues with her fights with her Medical Services colleague, it is clear that the much needed paradigm shift expected of her staff at the grassroots has failed to happen.

Like the MPs were posing, what exactly do the public health officials in our neighbourhoods do to earn a living? Do they wait for epidemics to break out before they start cranking, or are they not supposed to put into place systems that can avert such an outbreak?

The standards of hygiene in most Mombasa eating places are appallingly low because there is nobody to set them. Many restaurants, cafés and bars in the town centre have filthy, sometimes overflowing toilets, and woe unto you if you are ever suffer a diarrhoea attack.

THIS IS WHY THE RECENT ORDER TO CLOSE the eating houses by the Mombasa medical officer of health is a welcome and refreshing change from the litany of incompetence exhibited by the local government officials.

But this is hardly enough. There is need for the bloated administrations at the municipal council to send out regular teams to set and maintain hygiene standards instead of spending millions of tax-payers' money hunting down unemployed youths eking out a living in the suburbs.

Most of the council staff turn a blind eye to hygiene violations for small inducements by establishment owners to keep the filth flowing.

There is no reason one establishment should spend money to keep sanitary standards up to scratch, while the neighbouring one is steeped in filth and noxious uric fumes.

People who refuse to accept the basic hygienic requirements (they include some of the favourite fast-food outlets in the town centre) must be made to pay for their sins of omission.

Truly, what would it cost the town clerk and his officials to shut them down for a while, as they clean up their act, and publish a name-and-shame list as a future deterrent?

Meanwhile, last Saturday, as Mombasa golfers met to pay tribute to one of their most astute members, Mr Stephen G. Mbote, who passed on a year ago, media icon Francis Rafiki Raymond took a bow to be with his wife who had passed on two weeks earlier.

Two men, devoted to their families and careers and without undue fanfare changing their society through exemplary and honest behaviour, have made their adopted home, Mombasa, poorer by their absence.

Their long lives touched and changed many residents' lives.