TIRANA, Feb. 9 – Doctors at the main Mother Teresa hospital and many others countrywide held a one-hour strike Monday to protest against a new test the Health Ministry says every physician in the country must take to work in a public hospital.
The ministry says that the test will serve to check the qualification of the health personnel and does not intend to be used as a tool to terminate any doctors.
The health professionals call the test an insult to their long education and experience, and aimed to fire doctors so they can be replaced by others with political ties to the government.
Consequently they have pledged to hold protests regularly every Monday where they also ask for higher salaries, better working conditions and security at public hospitals.
They say that qualification of the medical are not checked through bureaucratic tests. All doctors in Albania have to go rigorous testing and years of practice to get their physicians’ licence.
“We work under a psychological pressure. Doctors’ testing only denigrates our figure and in the way it has been expressed it may be considered as a threat. It is not allowed in 2015 to make that to resolve problems that should have been resolved in 1991,” they said in a statement. “It is not testing which raises the quality of the doctors. Doctors are tested every day with their work. That is an artificial thing to cover up the problems of the government and the health ministry.”
The ministry is however set to continue with the test, despite growing pressure against it, including from governing coalition members of parliament.
