By Evie Andreou
STATE doctors will stage a six-hour work strike on Monday as a first measure against the proposal of the House finance committee to raise their retirement age by three years to 68, the head of PASYKI union Soteris Koumas said on Friday.
The proposal, supported by ruling party DISY and centre-right DIKO, is to be discussed on Monday, Koumas said, while it is to be tabled to the plenum for a vote on Thursday.
“Unless the House finance committee withdraws the proposal, we will decide how to proceed on a daily basis,” Koumas told the Cyprus Mail.
He said that the doctors’ profession is an unhealthy one, since they are on-call for a great number of years, which results in them not being able to rest properly. Speaking on state broadcaster CyBC, he also said that this decision affects the issue of staffing public hospitals as there are many doctors who work on contracts and are in line to be given a permanent post in state hospitals.
This PASYKI announcement out-stages their earlier decision, according to which they instructed their members that as of Monday, they were to limit the numbers of patients they examine to up to 20 people a day, while GPs will see 30.
The specific instruction came after repeated warnings to the ministry on the serious problems state hospitals face due to understaffing.
“We decided to give this instruction to our members in a bid to provide our fellow citizens the quality health care they deserve,” Koumas said. He added that in outpatient clinics, doctors have been examining up to 70 patients per day for a number of years now, while specialists see around 40 per day.
As regards the specific instructions, PASYKI is to make a final call on whether it should be applied or not as of Monday, depending on the response received from the health ministry’s Medical and Public Health Services in a bid to reach a compromise.
“We will examine these proposals over the weekend and we will inform our members accordingly,” Koumas said. He did mention what these proposals were, since the union’s board has not yet reached a decision.
Meanwhile, the health ministry too urged the House finance committee to reconsider the proposal on the extension of doctors’ retirement age, as at the moment “it serves no purpose”.
“The reasons for which this proposal was originally submitted no longer exist, since they were aimed at the stay of a number of medical professionals in the civil service for the proper functioning of public hospitals as a result of the implementation of legislation to freeze promotions,” a health ministry announcement said.
Since the date of the initial filing of the proposal, it added, several promotion positions have been released, while there are ongoing procedures for filling other positions.
“Given the pending reform in the health sector, this extension should not be given, since these issues will be dealt with, among others, in a consultation with all those directly affected from all groups of health professionals in view of the overhaul and autonomy of state hospitals. Therefore, the position of the health ministry is the annulment of the proposal,” the announcement said.
State employees’ union PASYDI, also expressed its opposition to the committee’s proposal and said that such a serious issue should be submitted by the government and be thoroughly discussed instead of being a law amendment discussed by political parties. This aims, an announcement said, in serving “isolated interests”.
It added that the proposal is “ethically unacceptable” and said that it prolongs insecurity as regards the employment status of 340 doctors who work on contract in state hospitals.
