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Conflict Incident Report
Public hospital employees start open-ended strike
Employees of Lebanon’s public hospitals began an open-ended strike Monday to protest the delayed implementation of the new salary scale.
Hundreds of protesters gathered around Beirut’s Riad al-Solh Square, calling on government officials to work to apply the salary scale to their paychecks as soon as possible.
“How are they going to preserve your rights?” one activist asked, in a direct address to those employees working “for humanitarian causes.”
Last month, employees of the Sidon Governmental Hospital held a strike demanding that the salary scale, which was passed in June 2017, be implemented. Worker strikes on this issue routinely close the hospital’s clinics, but provisions are made to keep the emergency room open.
“We have 29 government hospitals in Lebanon – that’s 4,000 workers providing service to 450,000 patients annually,” chairman of the staff’s follow-up committee at the hospital, Khalil Kannan, said at the time.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri in a memo distributed in December 2017 urged the new salary scale’s implementation.