Slovak hospital doctors are rebelling against a government austerity program that includes a partial rollback of already promised salary increases. More than 2,700 doctors have already resigned in protest.
They only want to withdraw their resignation if the government meets a number of requirements. This includes better equipment in hospitals, hiring additional staff and the 9.7 percent salary adjustment announced by the previous cabinet.
The government’s plan to convert hospitals into stock companies is causing particular outrage among the doctors’ union. Doctors’ representatives fear that this is a step towards “creeping privatization”.
The Minister of Health resigned at the beginning of October
So far no agreement has been reached with the new Health Minister Kamil Sasko. “Apparently the only way anything will change in the Slovak healthcare system is if we really stop it,” Peter Visolajsky, the president of the doctors’ union LOZ, told reporters in Bratislava on Tuesday. Sasko’s predecessor Zuzana Dolinkova resigned in early October. She justified this by saying her government did not support her enough to strengthen the financially starved healthcare system.
The three-party government under left-wing nationalist Prime Minister Robert Fico insists that the previous government failed to make “unsustainable” financial commitments and that these must now be corrected.
Source: Krone
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