Health Workers March Against Cuts

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Tuesday December 14 2010

DOCTORS and nurses protested in Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz on Tuesday night against regional government cuts to health services.

by JAMES TWEEDIE

Several hundred doctors and nurses, mostly members of nursing union SATSE and regional federation Intersindical Canaria, marched from the central Plaza Weyler to the nearby seat of the Canarian parliament.

A cohort of pallbearers, followed by mourners, carried a coffin bearing the slogan: “R.I.P. Public Healthcare.”

The regional government, a coalition of the conservative Peoples' Party and the nationalist Canarian Coalition, is currently debating a budget cut of €312 million – almost 12 per cent of the regional health budget – to be voted upon on December 20.

This would be in addition to cuts of €72 million earlier this year.

Some 2,000 nursing jobs are under threat and doctors face swingeing cuts in both their basic salaries and night duty rate.

The pay cut would come on the heels of a five per cent public service salary reduction imposed by the Socialist Workers' Party national government of prime minister José Luis Zapatero in June.
The protest organisers have already called a further demonstration at noon on Saturday.

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