Sarah Carr reports:
Lobby group Doctors Without Rights (DWR) said at a protest Friday that the board of the Doctors’ Syndicate has failed to implement resolutions voted on by the Syndicate’s general assembly in May.
Members of DWR demonstrated on the steps of the Syndicate and distributed an open letter addressed to Syndicate head Dr Hamdy El-Sayyed in which they criticize the failure of the Syndicate to fight for a minimum wage, in violation of resolutions voted on by general assemblies held in Tanta and Beni Suef last May.
“The decision to call for a minimum wage and a decision not to step down from this demand has repeatedly been voted on in general assemblies,” Dr Mona Mina told the press.
DWR have led a long-running campaign for a LE 1,000 minimum wage for doctors employed by the Ministry of Health.
In February the Syndicate’s general assembly voted to hold a two-hour strike in March. While the Syndicate’s board initially endorsed this decision, it changed its stance after Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif stated during a radio interview that strikes in hospitals are illegal.
The unilateral decision taken by the Syndicate board to “postpone” the strike pending a review of its legality put DWR at loggerheads with the Syndicate, and prompted the launch of a week-long sit-in in the Syndicate, in March, to object the decision.
During Syndicate general assemblies held in Tanta and Beni Suef in May, doctors again voted to pursue their campaign for a LE 1,000 minimum wage.
In July Ministerial decree 318 was passed. The decree awarded doctors pay rises in the form of a “doctor’s incentive payment” which ranged between 30 percent and 400 percent of the doctor’s basic wage.
Article 3 of the decree provides that “the provision of these incentive payments is linked to the availability of finances.”
The decree was roundly rejected by DWR who criticized its failure to put in place clear criteria governing the payment of the incentive.
DWR also criticized the vast differences in the percentage increases allocated to specialists compared with that promised to resident doctors.
“Despite the consensus of doctors during general assembly meetings on the slogan, ‘no stepping-down from the minimum wage,’ the Ministry of Health is determined to award pay rises in the form of bonuses,” DWR’s open letter reads.
Mina criticized the Syndicate’s abdication of doctors’ demand for a minimum wage.
“The duty of the Syndicate board is to implement general assembly decisions. The general assembly has not renounced its calls for a minimum wage and is not satisfied with [pay increases in the form of] incentive payments. This is not a real solution to the crisis.”
Doctors complain that the payment of incentives is not guaranteed, and that individual hospitals have interpreted decree 318 differently.
