Our View: Government doctors need to be publicly shamed and defeated

After a brief meeting with representatives of the state health services, Okypy, the perennially angry leader of Pasyki (government doctors union), Sotiris Koumas walked out because his members would not be paid the amount he was demanding for work done in 2023. Shortly after the meeting he appeared on a lunch-time news show on CyBC announcing the doctors would stage a 48-hour strike at all public hospitals in the last week of November.

This is an ongoing dispute about a how a productivity-linked bonus for the doctors should be calculated. To resolve the dispute, the two sides agreed to appoint an independent auditor to calculate the total bonus amount government doctors were entitled to, and that both would accept it. The amount the independent auditor came up with was €2.5m, but the doctors were demanding €4.8m so Pasyki decided it would not play. It did not approve of the amount so the agreement was not binding for the union which has now opted for blackmail – either doctors are paid €4.5m (it has reduced its initial demand slightly) or they will all go on strike and throw public hospitals into disarray.

Okypy and the health ministry should not be intimidated by Koumas’ blackmail. In fact they should view this as an opportunity for a full confrontation with Pasyki, which has been using threats and blackmail, ever since the introduction of Gesy to squeeze as much money out of Gesy as was possible for government doctors. Even the larger part of this ‘productivity pay’ was given horizontally, while the remainder, which doctors are now demanding was to have been linked to productivity and revenue generated by hospitals. Pasyki, instead, assumed the doctors would receive a maximum amount of money regardless of any accounting calculations.

Now is the time for Okypy to tell the doctors that the offer will not change, and they can go on strike for as long as they want. But the government needs to give its full backing to Okypy and should not be intimidated by the union. And if the doctors insist on going on strike it should publicly expose their greed and selfishness to the patients who will miss their appointments or have operations they had been waiting for months for postponed. Okypy should inform the public that doctors, who are on annual salaries of €150,000, were prepared to cause maximum inconvenience to patients in order to make an additional few thousand euros.

Let Pasyki defend this shameful greed. Let it defend the decision to cause chaos at hospitals to push the demand of the best-paid professionals in Cyprus for even more money. Let it explain why government doctors consistently put their personal interests above the welfare of patients. It is high time government doctors and their union were exposed to society for what they are. And if Pasyki dares to close down the A&E departments of hospitals as part of the strike (Koumas said this was the plan), the government should issue a decree forcing them to work, something that will be applauded by the public.

There is no room for compromise in this dispute. The government doctors need to be publicly shamed and defeated, because if they are not they will eventually bankrupt Gesy.