Managua, Nicaragua – The ongoing strike in Nicaragua’s health-care sector will continue indefinitely, since budgeting rather than financial obstacles make an agreement to resolve the conflict less likely, a health-care official said Saturday.
The secretary general of the Sandinista union Health Workers Federation (Fetsalud), Gustavo Porras, told reporters that yet another meeting with government representatives Friday night ended in failure.
Fetsalud has demanded a 30 percent raise for its 20,000 members, who have been on strike for two years from the nation’s hospitals and medical centers.
The Sandinista union has asked for 173 million cordobas ($9.9 million) so that the government can satisfy all its requests for higher wages and better working conditions.
According to Porras, some days ago Finance Minister Mario Arana said that a fund of 154 million cordobas ($8.8 million) was available to attend the demands of the health sector.
But according to Porras, Minister Arana said Friday night that only 28 million cordobas ($1.6 million) was available to resolve the strike.
“Every day we go backwards,” Porras said, adding that the worst is that now the government says that the problem isn’t getting the $8.8 million, but that another mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) won’t arrive in Managua until May.
Minister Arana, according to Porras, said that the government cannot take a decision until after the FMI mission has concluded its visit to Nicaragua.
For his part, Arana told the local media Saturday that what Fetsalud wants is that “we go ahead an give them now some salary adjustments that we still haven’t negotiated with our external financiers.”
Porras said that after the failure of the meeting on Friday, his union of health-care workers is planning to march through the streets of Managua next week in support of other organizations in the sector, such as the Civil Coordinator, a coalition of more than 350 social movements, NGOs, unions and federations.
Health Minister Margarita Gurdian said that while the strike continues, poor people will continue to be the ones who suffer most from the conflict.
Gurdian said Saturday on local television that because of the strike, up to Feb. 28 some 8,000 births had gone unattended, as well as 28,000 prenatal exams and 45,000 family-planning consultations in all the nation’s hospitals.
The doctors’ strike in hospitals and medical centers was started last Nov. 14 by some 3,000 physicians affiliated with the Pro Salarios medical federation who demand a 30 percent increase for this year.
The doctors separately renewed negotiations with the government on Friday, after police had left the hospitals where they were stationed at the request of the Health Ministry.
The ministry had asked for police to be present in the hospitals to guarantee that anyone who wanted to work could do so, and patients seeking health care could enter these medical facilities.
Doctors affiliated with the Pro Salarios medical federation are seeking a 140 percent increase in salaries over the next two years. After originally asking for 70 percent this year and 70 percent in 2007, their union said it would accept 30 percent in 2006 as long as the balance of the 140 percent is delivered by 2008.
