President of the Medical Association after a 25% increase: “Medicine is very poorly paid here”

Santo Domingo—The president of the Dominican Medical College (CMD), Waldo Ariel Suero, stressed this Saturday that the agreement reached with the Government, which ended the recent strike in the health sector, was not “the ideal negotiation” but assured that significant progress was made.

“We have been in dialogue with the government for about 10 months… We finally reached an agreement yesterday. It is not the ideal negotiation, because the ideal negotiation does not exist, but what was possible,” said Suero, after agreeing on a 25% salary increase for the union and other demands.

Rumors have surfaced that some health professionals do not comply with the established schedule. Suero strongly responded to these accusations. “It’s not true that doctors are lazy. 95% do a good job. As president of the CMD, I do not allow that type of accusation. Never!” he said in an interview on the Sol de los Sábados.

The president of the CMD stressed that doctors continue to work under working conditions established for decades, with a schedule of four hours a day and a weekly shift, which adds up to 44 hours a week. According to Suero, it is up to the Government to guarantee compliance with these schedules.

He also mentioned the low salaries received by doctors in the country, pointing out that professionals are hired for only 20 thousand pesos per month, while specialists reach 69 thousand pesos. “Here, medicine is very poorly paid. There is an incorrect predisposition towards the brilliant work of the doctor in this country,” he said.

Suero stressed that the salary increase achieved in the recent negotiations only offset the cost of inflation and described the current economic conditions of the medical sector as unsatisfactory.

These statements came a day after the CMD and the Health Cabinet agreed to suspend the protests after months of tense negotiations. In addition, last week, the union called a 72-hour national strike in public hospitals, demanding better wages, decent working conditions, and the cessation of arbitrary cancellations.