From the Daily News Egypt…
Members of the Doctors’ Syndicate along with the Doctors Without Rights movement organized a protest in front of the syndicate Sunday, demanding an increase in doctors’ salaries.
Protesters led by Essam El-Erian, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood group, threatened that doctors will go on strike if their demands were not met. He criticized government policies as well as those of the Ministry of Health regarding salary increases.
“We will keep protesting until our demands are met; if they aren’t we will go on strike like the Fayyoum doctors,” Rashwan Shaaban Rashwan, one of the leaders of Doctors Without Rights told Daily News Egypt.
Rashwan explained that a court case demanding doctors’ right to strike was adjourned to Sept. 1.
“All we want is a reasonable salary that enables doctors to live a good life and continue higher studies,” Rashwan added.
According to Rashwan, a fresh graduate from the Faculty of Medicine is paid LE 250 per month and a senior doctor is paid LE 600, while graduate studies fees are LE 1,600.
Doctors also criticized government policies in combating Hepatitis viruses B and C and ignoring cases that are known to carry them. They also demanded that the ministry increase doctors’ medical insurance in case they are infected — currently insurance is at LE 15 a day, while medication is prohibitively expensive.
Protesters carried banners urging President Mubarak to give the issue some attention and solve their problems before it is too late.
El-Erian criticized a recent decision by the Ministry of Health to hike the fees of mental health institutes, pointing out that they have now exceeded private hospital fees.
The MBs mobilization around the doctors’ issue constitute a classical case of how the Islamist group’s contradictory politics functions…
At the height of the struggle (which is by no means over) last February and March, Erian worked hand in hand with [the pro-govt head of the syndicate] Hamdi el-Sayyed in sabotaging the efforts by the leftist and independent doctors to mobilize for a national strike.
Muslim Brotherhood activists also did their best to curb the militancy of the sit-ins staged by doctors on the doorstep of their syndicate, which even reached the level of physically evicting leftist activists who descended on the syndicate to show solidarity with the protesters.
Now that the strike has been sabotaged, and the series of sit-ins died down, it’s much safer for Essam and the MBs to make such rhetorical statements and threats about the strike.. just to push the regime to act before something concrete happens on the ground which can well go beyond their control.