Galery

1

Marina Nikolova

Nurses, laboratory assistants and administrative staff of public hospitals across the country held protests in the morning. The employees of each hospital decided to protest in different ways - some were on strike for several hours, operations were cancelled, brief demonstrations were held at the outpatients' consulting rooms, or patients were prompted not to pay the examination fee of 5 euros.

Doctors and hospital staff from Athens and Piraeus announced a 24-hour strike on the 30^th of March, their primary demand being additional staff to be appointed, the public nature of the health care system to be preserved and mergers of hospitals to be cancelled. They will continue with a 5-hour strike from 10 am to 3 pm on the 31^st of March and will gather at a rally in front of the Ministry of Healthcare at 11 o'clock the same day.

"Our demands are for full-time staff to be appointed, sufficient funding to hospitals to be provided, speculation and corruption to end, the unified salary system to come into force, but wages to be increased and the 13^th and 14^th salaries to be restored. We also want to be included in the list of hazardous professions, our wages for night shifts and weekends on duty to be increased and to be paid our duties so far," said the chairman of the Health Workers Federation Stavros Koutsoubelis.
 
Although there is a need for new appointments everywhere, the greater need for staff is in larger hospitals, added Kutsubelis. He said the union had talks with the Minister of Health Andreas Loverdos, but the appointments are based on the one to five ratio, which applies to the whole public sector and means that only one employee is to be appointed for every five people left. This does not allow us to function properly. But it is evident that the Minister has his responsibility, since he has been involved in the negotiations on the revised Memorandum," said the chairman of the Health Workers Federation.

Gennimatas' hospital nurses and staff informed the patients about their demands this morning and asked them not to pay the examination fee of five euros. "It will be better if the patients do not pay the fee of five euros to the hospital," said the chairman of the staff union at the Gennimatas hospital Thomas Zelenitsas and told about the problems of the hospital where he works, which confirm what was said before.
 
"People supported us and agreed not to pay 5 euros for examination, because they all pay health insurance anyway. These five euros are not the solution that will "heal" hospitals’ funds. Wastefulness should stop as well as paying for drugs and medicines at extremely high prices. Some steps have been taken in this direction, but more have to be done. There are results from the reforms in relation to supply control already, but we are still reserved and try not to lack essential medicines. We don’t have these particular problems in our hospital, we have medicines. We made calls for suppliers, which had to be done years ago, there are positive results already," summarized Zelenitsas.

"The main problem is lack of staff in various departments in hospitals. We have faced this problem long ago, because some colleagues had left and no new people were appointed in their place. We do not know what will happen with regular wages and over-time payments. The hospital staff is paid 5 euros an hour, but the wage per hour for Sunday, night or holiday duties is very low – about 2.5 euros. Our demand is this wage to be doubled. We want to get paid for the duties since December," said Zelenitsas for GRReporter.info.

Laboratory assistants, nurses and attendants demand to be included in the list of hazardous jobs. "Overall, the hospital needs more nurses, technicians, technologists, because our colleagues have already been exhausted. They must cover regular shifts, duties, night shifts. There is a lack of technical staff too - electricians, but even the administration should have new appointments," said the chairman of the union workers at Gennimatas hospital.