Via Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:
Young doctors will stage a protest tomorrow in front of the Doctors Syndicate’s headquarters demanding better salaries for fresh graduates.
Initiated by the “Young Doctors of Egypt” group on Facebook, which currently includes over 700 members, tomorrow’s two-hour demonstration is the first protest organized by that group.
Young Egyptian doctors suffer from very low incomes ranging between LE 150 and LE250 a month, which barely cover the costs of transportation to the hospitals in which they work. They equally suffer from bureaucratic complications with regards to the pursuance of their studies and professional trainings.
“We address our protest to the Ministry of Health and demand salaries ranging from LE 1,000 to LE 2,000,” explains Mohammed Shafiq, a young doctor who disseminated the demonstration online. Fresh graduates demand raising their basic salary to 1000 LE, to reach a minimal level of 2000 LE with the addition of all bonuses and allowances. They also asked for raising various allowances such as the contagion allowance, as well as transportation, post-graduate studies and other allowances.
“We are also concerned about elevating the quality of the scientific education we receive,” adds Shafiq, who hopes that at least 10 percent of the group members on Facebook will show up at noon tomorrow in front of the Doctors’ Syndicate. In their statement of demands, young doctors requested continuing education inside hospitals through visits by established medics, participation in international conferences, scholarships and fellowship programs. They also requested facilitating the admission procedures for post-graduates studies, which are instrumental to medics’ professional path. Further to post-graduate studies, they demanded fixing a ceiling for admission fees at LE600, a sum that has currently jumped to LE3650.
“We are willing to join forces with other doctors’ organizations for common demands later on,” says Shafiq.
Tomorrow’s protest has been discussed at the board of the Doctors’ Syndicate earlier this week and has garnered at least “verbal” support from its senior members, including some of the Muslim Brotherhood activists within the syndicate.
“It is an opportunity for those young doctors to protest,” says Essam el-Aryan, member of both the Brotherhood and the Doctors’ Syndicate Board, adding that any kind of demonstration in support of doctors is appreciated. But it remains unclear how many doctors belonging to the Brotherhood will actually protest on the stairs of the syndicate alongside their young colleagues. In March 2008, Brotherhood members were accused by secular doctors’ advocacy groups of aborting a planned national strike. The Brothers’ involvement in the syndicate politics, they charged, were only limited to “rhetoric” and regional issues like Palestine solidarity campaigns, refraining from active participation in the fight over work conditions.
Some of us will be present tomorrow, but others have meetings outside,” adds el-Aryan who himself says he has a meeting tomorrow at the time of the protest. “If the demonstration is still on when I come back to the syndicate I will attend it,” he concludes.
The head of the syndicate, Hamdi el-Sayyed, was not available for comment.