Union: Hospital technicians do not stop strikes without additional salaries

The Private Sector Workers' Union announced that technical workers in the country's hospitals will not leave the strike until they receive additional payments, as medical personnel have received. That is also the only requirement for which over 2,000 local hospital technical workers today have entered the strike.

Yusuf Azam, chairman of the union, said that by Health Minister Armend Zemaj, it has been announced that by tomorrow there will be a decision on whether to pay these workers.

Azem said they would not interrupt the strike until there is official agreement that these vehicles will come to the workers' accounts.

So by tomorrow we're going to have the final version of what will be the solution to payment for these workers, I repeat it's not in any case the payment issue, just the dedication or positioning or decision of the government that can happen today for the division of these tools... if negotiations continue and go as agreed, I think tomorrow it will find us at our jobs, but there's nothing concrete that I'm talking about until all ends. We as trade unions will at no time get out of the strike unless we have official documents or official agreements that these vehicles will come to your accounts”, he said.

He said that in some countries workers are facing pressure, where he mentioned the Pec Community.

The union head said that any company trying to replace one worker with another during the time of the strike would receive a penalty of up to 5 thousand euros.

Also, he indicated that today by 12: 00 p.m., the strike will join the KKUK technical workers.

“Mbi 70 per cent of the QKUK workers have broken the barricade they've had inside and they're part of us. At 12 a group of workers will be present... Official information we had until yesterday morning that these workers would not join the strike, now over 70 per cent of these workers are also part of our own now”, he said.

And technical workers in hospitals and the Family Medicine Centre, do not receive additions as health personnel, are calling it discrimination.

Adem Borovci, QMF-8 security workers in Pristina, says the decision has discriminated against workers who have lower incomes.

“Under the Family Medicine Center worked from July 7, 1999, until 2011 we were under municipal management. This strike is due to this failure to get involved in the government package, the government has mostly ignored us when they said they were private sector workers, but the government has forgotten that these local institutions as central have privatised us without asking us at all. This money that's been raised extra to be distributed to the workers, in the first package we've received just as much as all other employees as the doctor, as the technician, as insurance, as the hygienist. This time we've been removed from the list as private sector workers and don't meet you with money from the state treasury, this is discrimination against workers, discrimination against those employees with lower income”, he said.

Even Xhavit Rrustemi, a QKMF security worker in Pristina, now five years, says they are at all times endangered and have deserved additions as medical personnel.

We're very overlooked why they didn't get us on the list, and they took them from doctors and sisters, and the technicians needed us. We are the first contact with the patient then come doctors and sisters, in the ambulance entrance we are number one contact with patients”, he said.

On the issue of additions to Kosovo's technical hospital workers, during the day, Health Minister Armend Zemaj has held meetings with Trade Union Chairman Jusuf Azemi, where he said that within two days they would look for the possibility of paying these workers