Doctors working at state hospitals went on strike on Tuesday as the dispute over performance-based bonuses paid by the state health services (Okypy) rolls on.
The strike is set to last 48 hours, with doctors insisting they are owed €4.5 million in financial incentives for 2023. Okypy had offered them €4.1m in July, before an independent analysis found that they were owed just €2.5m, infuriating the doctors.
They insist that they are ready to speak at any time to resolve the issue, particularly with a view to setting the parameters for pay going forward. However, they are also keen to reopen the matter of pay for the year 2023 – a matter Okypy insists is closed.
Okypy said any solution to the dispute “must be holistic”, and said an agreement should cover financial incentives between 2023 and 2027
With the strike going ahead, they added that they have “taken measures” to ensure patients continue to be treated and that “people’s lives are not endangered”.
Doctors’ union Pasyki chairman Sotiris Koumas said that while the strike is going on, doctors will “only work for those who are hospitalised” and that accident and emergency units will “operate in a specific way”.
President Nikos Christodoulides had intervened in the matter on Monday night, saying the state “will not bow to pressure that does not have [the] public interest at its epicentre”, and that “a crisis would be in no one’s interest”.
Doctors had also come under fire from the Federation of Cyprus patients’ associations (Osak) last week, with the federation describing it as “inconceivable and unacceptable” for trade unions to use patients’ health and safety as a tool to force their employers to accept their demands.
Despite the criticism, they insist they are owed much more than what has been offered, with Koumas saying in August that “our position is that the procedure was not followed as agreed, while the part of the analysis which has been leaked is just a part. It is not the entire study, the conclusions, and the recommendation made by the financial analyst.”
Meanwhile, Okypy spokesman Charalambos Charilaou was keen to point out that the given figure of €2.5m is “much smaller” than what doctors had originally claimed earlier in the year – a figure he said had amounted to more than €5m.
He was also keen to conclude proceedings and swiftly reach an agreement with Pasyki based on the analysis.
“There was a commitment from both sides that any outcome [from the analysis] would be acceptable. We on our side will keep our word and distribute the €2.5m to the doctors. We have invited the doctors’ unions to come today for that money to be distributed, but from what we have heard … they will not come, which is a shame,” he said.
He also disagreed with Koumas’ claim that only part of the study had been disclosed, saying, “the independent analysts sent the results of their analysis to us, and that was sent on to the unions in its entirety.”
“There is nothing else which should have been sent and that was not sent, as they are implying.”
