Medical doctors working at state hospitals went on strike on Tuesday because the dispute over performance-based bonuses paid by the state well being companies (Okypy) rolls on.
The strike is about to final 48 hours, with medical doctors insisting they’re owed €4.5 million in monetary incentives for 2023. Okypy had provided them €4.1m in July, earlier than an unbiased evaluation discovered that they have been owed simply €2.5m, infuriating the medical doctors.
They insist that they’re prepared to talk at any time to resolve the problem, significantly with a view to setting the parameters for pay going ahead. Nevertheless, they’re additionally eager to reopen the matter of pay for the 12 months 2023 – a matter Okypy insists is closed.
Okypy stated any resolution to the dispute “should be holistic”, and stated an settlement ought to cowl monetary incentives between 2023 and 2027
With the strike going forward, they added that they’ve “taken measures” to make sure sufferers proceed to be handled and that “individuals’s lives are usually not endangered”.
Medical doctors’ union Pasyki chairman Sotiris Koumas stated that whereas the strike is happening, medical doctors will “solely work for many who are hospitalised” and that accident and emergency items will “function in a selected method”.
Pasyki clarified in a while Tuesday that those that had appointments with specialist medical doctors, all-day hospitalisations for remedy, endoscopies, or different comparable procedures scheduled on the times of the strikes, may have their remedy postponed.
Moreover, they stated, all scheduled operations have been postponed, and solely emergencies relating to sufferers in crucial situations might be dealt with. As such, anybody attending an accident and emergency unit with a non-critical emergency might be taken to a close-by personal hospital by ambulance.
Intensive care items are working with minimal staffing, whereas chemotherapy periods which will be rescheduled might be rescheduled.
In the meantime, the Cyprus Information Company reported that on the Famagusta common hospital in Paralimni and the Larnaca common hospital, plenty of medical doctors determined to not strike, that means that plenty of clinics within the two hospitals stay open.
President Nikos Christodoulides had intervened within the matter on Monday evening, saying the state “won’t bow to stress that doesn’t have [the] public curiosity at its epicentre”, and that “a disaster could be in nobody’s curiosity”.
Medical doctors had additionally come below hearth from the Federation of Cyprus sufferers’ associations (Osak) final week, with the federation describing it as “inconceivable and unacceptable” for commerce unions to make use of sufferers’ well being and security as a device to pressure their employers to just accept their calls for.
Regardless of the criticism, they insist they’re owed far more than what has been provided, with Koumas saying in August that “our place is that the process was not adopted as agreed, whereas the a part of the evaluation which has been leaked is only a half. It’s not your complete examine, the conclusions, and the advice made by the monetary analyst.”
In the meantime, Okypy spokesman Charalambos Charilaou was eager to level out that the given determine of €2.5m is “a lot smaller” than what medical doctors had initially claimed earlier within the 12 months – a determine he stated had amounted to greater than €5m.
He was additionally eager to conclude proceedings and swiftly attain an settlement with Pasyki based mostly on the evaluation.
“There was a dedication from either side that any consequence [from the analysis] could be acceptable. We on our aspect will preserve our phrase and distribute the €2.5m to the medical doctors. We now have invited the medical doctors’ unions to return at present for that cash to be distributed, however from what we have now heard … they won’t come, which is a disgrace,” he stated.
He additionally disagreed with Koumas’ declare that solely a part of the examine had been disclosed, saying, “the unbiased analysts despatched the outcomes of their evaluation to us, and that was despatched on to the unions in its entirety.”
“There may be nothing else which ought to have been despatched and that was not despatched, as they’re implying.”
