Temporarily employed doctors stage rally
Temporarily employed doctors stage rally
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Some 200 "temporarily employed" doctors from across the
country held a rally at the Ministry of Health office here on
Monday to demand the government clarify their status along
with improvements to their welfare.
The physicians, grouped in the Indonesian Doctors Forum (FDI),
warned that if their demands are not met thousands of these
temporarily employed doctors would hold a national strike.
Temporarily employed doctors are usually recent graduates of
medical schools who are obliged, based on Law No. 8/1961, to
serve a mandatory period of service assigned by the government.
These doctors are assigned for two- to- three-year periods,
often in remote locations around the archipelago.
The mandatory service period is regarded as a prerequisite
before they can open private practices as general practitioners
or study further in a specialist field.
It is estimated that there are some 10,000 temporarily
employed doctors serving the 27,000 community health centers
throughout Indonesia.
FDI's spokesman Agung Sapta Adi said on Monday that these
doctors were merely being exploited by the government. He added
that despite the years of service in "hardship" locations, these
doctors also had no clear employment status -- neither as
contract workers nor civil servants.
Agung added that not only were they being paid subsistence
wages, their salary more often than not was not paid on time.
Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi, who met the protesting
doctors and claimed he sympathized with their plight, said there
was little he could do given temporarily employed doctors were
bound by laws and decrees.
Stressing that strikes were not an acceptable course of
action, he suggested they directly seek the support of
legislators to amend the law.
But several of the doctors said the strike would proceed if
their concerns were not addressed.
Dendi Kadarsan, a doctor stationed in Indramayu, West Java,
however said the doctors would still uphold the ethics of their
profession and only engage in a "structural strike" which would
only disrupt routine health care but not critical life and death
situations.