Last-ditch effort underway to call off doctors’ strike

Minister of Health Michalis Damianos on Monday is continuing with last-ditch efforts to call off a doctor’s strike, with meeting set for 8.30am at the ministry with all stakeholders involved in the dispute.

Doctors unions last week had announced an unprecedented 48-hour strike to take place Tuesday to Thursday.

The health minister who has held “continuous and intensive” phone contacts with stakeholders since Friday to convince doctors to cancel the strike, called for a three-day meeting with the doctors union and the state health services organisation (Okypy) to break the deadlock, he told state broadcaster CyBC.

Public employees union (Pasydy) faction head Moisis Lambrou, speaking on the same programme, said things were “on a good road” and that it was hoped a significant breakthrough would be achieved.

Doctors’ union (Pasyki) head Sotiris Koumas, meanwhile, took a wait-and-see attitude, commenting to the Cyprus News Agency that “hope always dies last”.

The two public doctors’ unions will also meet at 11.00am with the head of the parliamentary health committee Efthymios Diplaros, who took the initiative.

The doctors unions announced the strike -the first in 20 years- on Wednesday with claims that their demands for remuneration were not being met by Okypy, in a proposal made to them on the issue of payment of accrued wages deriving from an incentives formula.

Pasyki had said doctors would strike from 7.30am on Tuesday until 7.30am on Thursday, with skeleton staff tending only to emergencies from A&E or complications from inpatients, with all other patients to be referred to private providers.

In a post on ‘X’ on Saturday the health minister urged all involved to consider the consequences of the strike action on the public, expressing the hope that it would be averted.

He called on doctors to cooperate and act with responsibility and understanding to promptly reach an agreement for everyone’s benefit.

The ministry of finance, meanwhile, slammed the strike saying it could not be an answer to problems. Worker demands must be confined within the range of Okypy’s financial capacities, the ministry said.

Speaking to CyBC radio on Monday morning, however, Minister of Finance Makis Keravnos, struck a different tone, saying support for Okypy, which was to have been terminated in May, was ongoing.

The minister refused to be drawn into a direct answer as to how long the support to the organisation could continue. The money provided is tax payer money, the Keravnos said, and this must be borne in mind and the goal is to reach agreement so that the independence of Okypy can be effected.

However, public hospitals must continue to function, he said.

“We want public hospitals to continue so we will continue to support [Okypy]. They must continue to exist because they support the public [good],” he said. It was “not the right moment” to predict how long Okypy will need support and if it will need support beyond the one year extension already granted, the minister said.