Medical Personnel of Kharaguali Hospital Complains about Breached Labor Rights

Mari Tabidze, Kharagauli

On December 9, medical personnel of the Kharagauli hospital went on warning strike. Doctors complained about unbearable working conditions and low salaries. Besides that, there are poor sanitary norms in the hospital; the building is not supplied with water. Besides that, doctors have to fight for and appeal to the central office for their salaries every month. Despite similar conditions, nobody pays attention to them.

“I have been working in this hospital for many years but we had never had similar conditions before. It is difficult to get a patient here when there is no water and attendants have to fetch water from neighboring houses. Water-supply system is old and does not work. When hospital was sold out, we expected the new owner to create normal conditions here but in vain. Even more, we have never met the new owner at all,” chief nurse of the surgery department of the hospital Tamriko Tavrazashvili said.

Medical personnel claimed the owner company had deceived them when signing new labor contracts with them. The agreement reads that the Company will pay salaries but amount of the salary and payment-period are not clarified in it. The owner company explained the delay in salary-payment by the fact that state had not transferred money to them.

Average monthly salary of a nurse is 70 lari. As for number of patients, the medical personnel do not complain about it. According to the information of the hospital’s administration in November 42 emergency cases were registered in the hospital.

The personnel said the situation had complicated since the facility was sold out. It was sold to Insurance Company Irao Group a year ago. Kharagauli district population hold medical policies of different insurance companies that is one of the reasons of delayed money –transfer and it creates another problem.

The personnel requests to seize the hospital from the owner company and appealed to the Kharagauli district majoritarian MP for help. Representative of the MP’s office Inga Magradze said, “The medical personnel really have to work in hard conditions. They do not have elementary technical base and sanitary norms. Low salaries are another problem which they receive salaries once in three months. Naturally, these problems impact their work because personnel cannot properly serve patients. I will inform the MP about the problems; representatives of the Healthcare Ministry and Healthcare Committee of the Parliament will also learn about this problem.”

Representatives of the Kharagauli district MP’s office started working on special conclusion about the situation in district hospital on December 10 and they will send the document to aforementioned institutions.