Emergency medical center’s doctors on strike
By Keti Arjevanidze
Monday, March 11
It is already the fifth day the two camps are open at Gladni-Nadzaladevi regional service building with five doctors of the emergency medical center on strike. Doctors are protesting dismissing “without explanation” and demand the resignation of the emergency service center head, Kakha Chikhradze. They also want the center’s administration changed. According to the doctor’s, Chikhradze and his colleagues put too much pressure on the doctors.
If demands are not met, they plan to hold large-scale protest rallies. Sharing their plan to public, protesters also admitted that the center’s administration threatens the doctors with dismissal if they participate in the protest.
Zurab Lataria, former doctor of the 11th regional service, appealed to Chikhradze to come to the protesters and get interested in their situation.
The doctors on strike say that due to their strike, the population will not have any problems with calling ambulances. According to them, the protest is directed towards the improvement of emergency services and they will try to avoid any negative consequences on the population because of their protests.
Emergency service center head, Chikhradze, denied accusation against him and as the motive of employees’ dismissal he named the wish from doctors to cause problems in the center, Radio Liberty reports.
The dismissed doctors believe that Chikradze’s motive in their removal was the complaints towards him regarding patients’ hospitalization. Lataria, one of the doctors who were dismissed, remembers that the doctors were instructed to take the patients not to the profiled clinics, according to their symptoms, but to the multi-profiled clinics via emergency, which Lataria does not justify. According to him, patients should be taken to suitable profile clinics.
Soso Jachvliani, majoritarian MP of the Georgian Dream in the Gldani district, visited the protesters and stated that the issue should be set via conversation and dialogue.
The doctor’s protest is unacceptable for the Deputy Minister of Health, Kakha Sakandelidze. He believes the doctor’s protest is unfounded when their salaries have been increased by70% and they have been provided flexible working hours and good working conditions.
Sakandelidze shares Chikhradze’s decision about pateints’ hospitalization in multi-profiled clinics. He also welcomed the creation of a control service, “which excluded financial dealings with various clinics and emergencies,” the deputy minister said in his interview with Radio Liberty. He added that the doctors’ demands are unreasonable and asked the strikers to apply to the court with their complaints.
