DOCTORS at state hospitals are due to go on strike this morning with no sign last night of the government agreeing to meet their demands for better pay and conditions.
After a meeting yesterday with the president of the Pancyprian Medical Association, Antonis Vassiliou, Health Minister Frixos Savvides insisted patients and emergency cases would be treated at private clinics.
Savvides will co-ordinate the government’s emergency plan with a group of officials at the ministry, giving information and guidance to patients and their families.
“We hope to minimise the chances of something bad happening,” the minister said.
Vassiliou said that if any emergency could not be treated by the private sector, then state doctors would be called back at hospitals.
Only in-patients will be treated at state hospitals, with emergency departments closed and operations cancelled.
Savvides yesterday appealed to doctors’ union PASIKY to call off the action and meet for talks instead, saying he recognised that a review of salaries was overdue.
But PASIKY delivered an ultimatum to the government, saying they would only call off the strike if the ministry submitted written or oral proposals to the doctors or gave some signs of willingness to satisfy their demands.
Savvides replied negotiations would not begin until the strike had been called off.
“We have been waiting for the last one and a half years for the government to start addressing our problems. I think we have been patient enough,” PASIKY’s vice-president Petros Petrides said.
“If the government is afraid of losing face, they can maybe submit proposals addressing our problems to a body or person to act as a mediator between them and us. And we would agree to keep that from the media for some time while calling off action in the meantime,” he suggested.
But the Health Minister said he had to respect the government’s decision taken last week that no union demands were to be addressed before Parliamentary elections due in late May.
“We cannot disobey the government just because state doctors want to have it their way,” Savvides stressed.
State doctors have warned that more strikes could follow.
One of the main bones of contention is over doctors’ starting salaries, which are similar to those paid to teachers, despite the fact that doctors have to do a minimum of five years of extra studying before they begin at the bottom end of the scale.
Doctors demand that their starting salary should be “significantly higher” than the current £950 a month. Savvides has confirmed the government is willing to increase salaries for doctors at the lower end of the scale, and admits the current £950 is “a little on the low side.”
However, he has said the government would be reluctant to raise wages for those at the top, claiming they already earn a lot of money.
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