Turkey’s healthcare workers protest nationwide over wages, working conditions
Feb 08 2022
http://ahval.co/en-136231
Turkey’s healthcare workers on Tuesday began a country-wide one-day strike to call for a wage increase to counter soaring inflation and improved working conditions, Evrensel newspaper reported.
Led by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), protests took place in front of hospitals across the country, including capital Ankara, southeastern Batman province, Istanbul and central Adana province, it said.
The TTB is calling for a minimum of 150 percent increase in pay for the country’s health workers in a bid to offset Turkey’s inflation, which registered at a two-decade high of 48.7 percent in January, according to official data.
Workers are calling for more manageable workloads and increased security amid the mounting workload prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring cases of physical violence against employees of the sector, Evrensel said.
Turkey’s rising inflation and the slide of the Turkish lira, which lost 44 percent of its value in 2021, has hit the population hard, with the value of salaries dropping and costs of goods and energy dramatically on the rise.
TTB’s Istanbul Chair Professor Pınar Saip on Tuesday threatened further strikes if the sector’s demands were not met.
"The working conditions being imposed on us and the miserable wages are not our fate,’’ Duvar news site sited Saip as saying in a press release in front of Istanbul University Hospital. "We are prepared to go on longer strikes."
Turkey’s healthcare workers were subject to 190 acts of violence targeting over 315 healthcare workers in 2021, according to a report by the Union of Health Care and Social Service Workers (Sağlık-Sen).
The New York Times earlier this month reported that Turkish doctors were increasingly leaving the country, citing that they were overworked and underpaid while facing increased physical violence.
Feb 08 2022
http://ahval.co/en-136231
Turkey’s healthcare workers on Tuesday began a country-wide one-day strike to call for a wage increase to counter soaring inflation and improved working conditions, Evrensel newspaper reported.
Led by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), protests took place in front of hospitals across the country, including capital Ankara, southeastern Batman province, Istanbul and central Adana province, it said.
The TTB is calling for a minimum of 150 percent increase in pay for the country’s health workers in a bid to offset Turkey’s inflation, which registered at a two-decade high of 48.7 percent in January, according to official data.
Workers are calling for more manageable workloads and increased security amid the mounting workload prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring cases of physical violence against employees of the sector, Evrensel said.
Turkey’s rising inflation and the slide of the Turkish lira, which lost 44 percent of its value in 2021, has hit the population hard, with the value of salaries dropping and costs of goods and energy dramatically on the rise.
"The working conditions being imposed on us and the miserable wages are not our fate,’’ Duvar news site sited Saip as saying in a press release in front of Istanbul University Hospital. "We are prepared to go on longer strikes."
Turkey’s healthcare workers were subject to 190 acts of violence targeting over 315 healthcare workers in 2021, according to a report by the Union of Health Care and Social Service Workers (Sağlık-Sen).
The New York Times earlier this month reported that Turkish doctors were increasingly leaving the country, citing that they were overworked and underpaid while facing increased physical violence.
Feb 10 2022
http://ahval.co/en-136314
Turkey’s doctors are packing up and looking to leave the country over poor wages, rising inflation and feelings of dejection after two years of hard work fighting COVID-19, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The flight of Turkish doctors abroad carries a particular sting for the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which presided over the creation of a universal healthcare program that provided millions with medical care. The reforms introduced provisions that contributed to the growth of private healthcare services that reduced some of the burden on a more centralised system of care run by the state.
Fast forward two decades and the Turkish economy is in a dramatically different place, suffering from high inflation and a battered Turkish lira. Doctors who spoke to the New York Times complain that the deterioration of the Turkish economy has weighed on their choice to leave as their salaries drop to a level just above minimum wage.
Beyond economic reasons, Turkish doctors who spoke to the Times complained that their profession was being actively devalued by the Turkish government. Despite increasing coverage for more citizens, the caseload grew only heavier for doctors, a factor exasperated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Concerns about their physical safety were also cited as reasons to emigrate. According to one report from 2020, over 90,000 attacks on medical staff on behalf of relatives of the patients were registered in the entire country in the last decade. The government has a system for accounting for attacks on medical professionals, but doctors have complained that their attackers are not being deterred.
Frustration among Turkish healthcare workers has approached a boiling point. On February 8, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) announced a nationwide strike and protested in front of the Turkish parliament in Ankara. The demonstrators complained about their lack of pay, hazardous working conditions amid the pandemic and about being overworked. The TTB itself acknowledged this confluence of complaints as a motivating factor for many Turkish doctor to seek new lives abroad.
No comments:
Post a Comment