Doctors are in a riot! 9 thousand resignations in 20 months

For the last two years, the revolt of physicians, whose working standards have been aggravated due to the epidemic and who have had to resign from their positions due to economic difficulties, has been continuing. The President of the Manisa Medical Chamber announced that in the 20-month period since the outbreak began, the number of physicians who have resigned throughout Turkey has reached 9 thousand due to both the aggravating workload and increasing economic difficulties.

Health workers whose workload has been aggravated since the Covid-19 outbreak began, continue to voice their issues to the government on the actions they have taken to express the economic hardships they have been experiencing.

The Manisa Medical Chamber and the physicians affiliated to the chamber took action in front of the Manisa Mental Health and Diseases hospital, where 10 physicians resigned from its structure due to the aggravating workload and economic difficulties.

“OUR DOCTORS DO NOT GET PAID TO LIVE HUMANLY”

Speaking on behalf of the action physicians, President of the chamber stated that the distress experienced by physicians in the health system with working conditions and the inability to get along at one time added to the distress.

In his statement, he emphasized that physicians could not get humanely livable wages in the health sector as well as in all sectors and gave the following statements:

“Recently, while there has been an increasing inflation in the bazaar and the kitchen in this country, the cost of living has occupied the people’s agenda with new hike news every day, and the voices of ‘We can’t get along’ are rising everywhere.”

* Of course, physicians and health workers are also affected by this impoverishment and cannot receive the wages to live humanely. Excluding fixed-payment; the salary of a general practitioner who has just started working is about TL 4 thousand 900, the salary of a specialist physician for 30 years is TL 5 thousand 800. Although a partial improvement was made to the physician’s pension with the amendment made in 2018, this payment is deducted if the physician retires and works.

*In addition, doctors who are connected and retired from the Social Security Institution were not included in this regulation, and a new inequality and loss of rights were created. The pension of doctors with BAĞ-KUR and SSK pensions, which make up 30 percent of retired physicians, is between TL 2300- 4000 and wages, unfortunately, have also remained below the hunger limit.