EGYPT: No strike

After weeks of protest, the Egyptian Doctors’ Union decided earlier this week to call off a strike over higher wages. The decision followed a veiled threat by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif who told the doctors:  “Many people are perhaps unaware of the fact that public sector employees — in particular doctors — are prohibited from striking. Those who wish to express themselves have many alternative methods to stopping work.”

Around 90,000 government-paid doctors were expected to participate in a two-hour strike next Saturday to force the government to increase a doctor’s starting monthly salary to $200. In most cases, a young doctor working for a state institution earns about $70 a month. The suspension of the strike by the union’s board disappointed many doctors who accused their representatives of surrendering to state pressures. The lobbying group Doctors Without Rights decided to hold a sit-in next week on the same day the strike was supposed to take place in protest of the decision of their Union’s board.

In a statement published in the local press, the group said: “The union has betrayed doctors’ hopes … on the pretext that it wishes to protect doctors and not expose them to the administrative or legal measures threatened by the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister.”

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo