Via Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:
Around 40 young doctors staged their first demonstration today on the stair steps of the Doctors’ Syndicate, demanding better pay and improving work conditions. The fresh graduates’ two-hour protest was organized by the “Young Doctors of Egypt” Facebook group.
“Our starting salary is around LE 150 a month, and what can we expect after 10 years of practice? 900 pounds,” explains Ahmad Atef, a general practicioner, who founded the Facebook group around two months ago to give a voice to underpaid young doctors in Egypt. Atef stood in the protest waving a photocopy of his pay sheet around on which he had underlined his paltry salary.
Mohammed Shafiq, another member of the group responsible for publicizing the protest online, adds bitterly “we all studied medicine for 11 years. Do we really lose the best years of our youth for LE 250 a month?”
Salaries are not the only matter of concern for those young doctors, they say. They also face skyrocketing admission fees for post-graduate studies, which have recently jumped from LE 600 to LE 3650, and they are deprived of allowances for transportation, food and medicine.
“None of us receive any compensation of any kind, not even when we need to go to another province for work,” says Atef, who then compares young Egyptians doctors’ salaries to those received by their Saudis counterparts. “They start off with LE 15,000. Of course Saudi Arabia’s finances are much better, but the gap is far too wide!” he continues, his pay sheet still in his hand.
Emigration to the US or the Gulf states remains a possible, yet increasingly difficult, option for improving the young doctors’ salaries, but most of the protesters say they wish to stay in their homeland. Shafiq, for instance, says that “being humiliated by the Oil States,” does not appeal to him. “This is why this gathering is important, we want our work conditions to improve in Egypt and we will act concretely and peacefully to achieve this goal,” he declares.
On the stairs, the group of young doctors are silent. No humming or chants emanates from the crowd. The demonstration is peaceful and orderly, and the rows of policemen that normally surround any gathering are notably absent. “I guess the police know that we are not run by any political group,” Shafiq muses. “I do not know whether this (Young Doctors of Egypt) group will survive in the following months but if it does not I am confident that another one will take its place,” he concludes.