Doctors from the North Regional Health Administration began a two-day strike on Wednesday called by the Independent Doctors Union (SIM), demanding that the Government integrate the entire medical class into the single salary table of the public service. According to the SIM, the doctors will be paralyzed from midnight to midnight on Thursday.
In statements to the Lusa news agency, the regional secretary of SIM Norte, Hugo Cadavez, affirmed that the negotiations with the Government “did not yield results.” Trading period expired [em 30 de junho] we are faced with this need to resort to the hardest form of struggle, which is the strike, which we do not like to do, which we do not want to do, but we were forced to do so, as a way of demonstrating our discontent”, he stressed.
According to Hugo Cadavez, the doctors who work in the National Health Service (SNS) consider that “the working conditions and the remuneration conditions are not attractive”. “That is what is causing an unprecedented departure of doctors from the SNS. (…) Only in 2021 and 2022, more than 2,000 doctors left the SNS. That is the main motivation of this strike, ”he stressed.
The union leader requested that the “negotiations have concrete and objective proposals (…) and not a 1.6% salary increase when inflation in the last year was 7%, when doctors lost 20% of purchasing power in the last 10 years, when in the public service all professional groups saw an increase in the average monthly income and a decrease in doctors (…)”.
“All this leads (…) to unprecedented situations of routine closures of emergency services due to a lack of doctors, (…) because doctors leave the SNS, they are unhappy with what happens in the SNS and then there is no capacity, with the doctors who are on the staff of the hospitals and resorting to doctors who provide services in the workplace, to be able to have a full emergency scale”, he observed.
The union requires the Ministries of Finance and Health to present “a proposal for a salary grid that recovers the career of losses accumulated by the inflationary erosion of the last decade and that positions the entire medical profession, including interns, with honor and justice.” , in the single table of remuneration of the public function”.
In the strike that began this Wednesday at 00:00, 12 hospitals and 11 Groups of Health Centers (ACES) are covered, with the minimum services being insured.
The strike, according to the SIM, will affect the São João University Hospital Center (Porto), the Matosinhos Local Health Unit (ULS) (Porto), the Póvoa de Varzim/Vila do Conde Hospital Center (CH) (Porto ), HPP do Tâmega e Sousa (Porto), HC in Médio Ave, Local Health Unit (ULS) in Alto Minho (Viana do Castelo), HC in Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (Vila Real), ULS in Northeast (Bragança) ), National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences of the North, Hospital of the Armed Forces (Porto), Portuguese Institute of Blood and Transplants (Porto) and Division of Intervention in Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies (Porto).
Also the ACES of Alto Trás-os-Montes — Alto Tâmega and Barroso, Douro I — Marão and Douro Norte, Douro II — Douro Sul, Grande Porto I — Santo Tirso/Trofa, Grande Porto III — Maia/Valongo, Grande Porto IV — Póvoa de Varzim/Vila do Conde, Grande Porto VI — Porto Oriental, Tâmega I — Baixo Tâmega, Tâmega II — Vale do Sousa Sul and Tâmega III — Vale do Sousa Norte will be affected. ARS Norte has another strike scheduled for September 20 and 21.
Source: Observadora
