CAIRO: The Doctors' Syndicate General Assembly decided in a meeting on Friday to hold protests starting next week demanding a new law that would increase doctors' salaries, according to Dr Hamdy El-Sayed, chairman of the Doctors' Syndicate and head of the People's Assembly's (PA) health committee. Following the meeting, doctors staged an impromptu protest where they shouted anti-government slogans and demanded raises to their current pay, which ranges between LE 130 - LE 400. In a television report which appeared on Dream TV's "Ashera Masaan, protestors said they were prohibited by heavy security presence from taking their protest further than the Syndicate steps. El-Sayed told Daily News Egypt that the law proposes that monthly salaries should increase to a minimum of LE 1,000. The Syndicate's General Assembly has threatened to hold protests every Sunday starting next week in front of the PA until the government approves the law. The committee announced that if the government brushes off their demands, a nation-wide strike will be held on March 15, where all doctors working in public hospitals will refrain from work from 9-11 am, only attending to emergency cases. "We will try to use all the legal and available means to put pressure on the government to accept our request, El-Sayed added. However, El-Sayed realizes the risk involved in holding such a strike - which he refers to as "symbolic - but said that "we will make sure that no lives are jeopardized. He noted that the two-hour strike is only restricted to public hospitals and assured that all doctors will remain in the hospitals to attend to emergency cases. However, he warned that this form of strike may increase in time and scale in the future if their demands were not met. Even though the new doctors' law was approved by the majority of voters in the Syndicate's General Assembly, El-Sayed said, the government has to approve it before it is passed by the PA because the law requires government financing. Dr Farid Ismail, member of the PA's health committee, previously told Daily News Egypt that discussing a draft law regarding doctors' deteriorating financial conditions was a priority at the current parliamentary session which began last November. However, the PA has yet to discuss this urgent law.
