Sarah Carr reports:
Doctors staged protests Wednesday calling for improved pay, implementing a Doctors’ Syndicate vote agreed upon during an emergency general assembly meeting on March 21.
The protests were to be held at 12 pm in government hospitals throughout Egypt.
Around 50 doctors gathered at Abbaseya psychiatric hospital in Cairo, carrying placards saying “an Egyptian doctor’s salary over three years is equivalent to one month of an Arab doctor’s salary” and “there will be no compromise on demands for a minimum wage.”
Doctors are calling for a LE 1,000 minimum wage. A junior doctor working within the Ministry of Health currently starts on a basic salary of roughly LE 240. Senior doctors receive on average LE 500.
“We have to pay LE 1,800 a year for masters degree tuition fees. I just cannot afford these fees on my wages,” one doctor at the Abbasseya protest told Daily News Egypt.
“The Minister of Health promised that wages will be increased but this hasn’t happened,” she continued.
The Doctors’ Syndicate previously voted to stage a two-hour strike in hospitals, during an emergency general assembly meeting in February.
The strike was initially endorsed by Syndicate head Dr Hamdy El-Sayyed but was subsequently suspended after Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif suggested in a radio interview that such action would be illegal.
The decision to suspend the strike prompted a one-week sit-in in the Doctors’ Syndicate by members of the Doctors Without Rights lobby group in March.
More reports from the local media could be found here.