DOCTORS AT state hospitals and emergency departments will walk out for 24 hours on January 12, if their demands for higher salaries are not met.
This was the warning issued yesterday by the State Doctors’ Union (PASIKY).
“There will not be a single state doctor working on January 12, not even at the emergency departments,” PASIKY’S President Stavros Stavrou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday shortly after doctors announced their decision taken at a Union Council’s meeting.
Health Minister Frixos Savvides countered the Union’s threats, claiming that health services were more than ready to face a strike but did not refer to any specific measures to deal with such a crisis.
Stavrou said: “The minister said he was ready to face anything. Ask him how he plans to deal with patients showing up at the emergency departments. We are more than willing to co-operate with colleagues working in the private sector to treat emergency cases if we are asked to.”
He said more strikes could follow, adding that everything depended on the government’s willingness to meet with the Union’s demands.
“The strike measures could be called off altogether if the government starts addressing our problems,” Stavrou noted.
PASIKY’S call to action followed a recent government decision to satisfy schoolteachers’ demands for a pay rise.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail earlier this month, PASIKY President complained, “teachers earn as much as we do. We spend an average of 12 years studying and we start working at 35 while teachers start at 23. Plus, the pensions and providence funds we receive after retirement are 80 per cent of what teachers receive.”
The starting salary for schoolteachers is £800-900 per month, the same as unspecialised doctors. Doctors with a specialist degree get £950.
Health Minister Frixos Savvides told reporters yesterday just before Doctors’ Union announced its strike measures: “If PASIKY goes on strike it will be my burden and problem to solve. But I want to believe that doctors’ final decision will be a reasonable one, giving us adequate time to address their problems.
“However government services are more than ready to face a strike staged by the doctors but I will not refer to specific measures” he added. It is thought that the ministry plans to assign part of state doctors’ work to private clinics.
The Union has repeatedly blamed the Finance Minister for the “unacceptable situation” accusing the government of going back at its promise two years ago to see that doctors’ demands for higher salaries were met by 2000.
PASIKY argues that the government is taking advantage of the fact that the nature of their profession makes it difficult for them to just drop everything and leave.
Deputies from across the political spectrum back the Union’s struggle.
According to Stavrou, Savvides admitted to understanding the doctors’ position but failed to apply any pressure on the Cabinet to address their problems.
The minister is due to address the Union’s General Assembly in mid-January to broach the matter.
Meanwhile, Stavrou has pleaded with the state, the political parties, the House of Representatives and non-governmental agencies, such as patients’ organisations, for support.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
