Cape Verde Health Professionals Announce Three-Day Strike

Health professionals in Cape Verde announced a three-day strike to demand that the Government fulfill several demands, including a salary increase. The strike, which will affect all health departments and services on the country's nine inhabited islands, will begin at 08:00 (10:00 in Lisbon) on 31 July and end at 08:00 on 3 August, covering all professional classes of health structures.

As reported by LUSA, Luís Lima, representative of the unions, highlighted at a press conference that the strike is a "need to show that [health] workers are not satisfied, especially with regards to the salary scale".

The strike notice was delivered to the General Directorate of Labor and the Ministry of Health last Friday. Despite a meeting with the Government held on Monday, professionals were not convinced by the proposals presented. "They had to deliver some documents until Thursday, but even so, we maintained the strike notice," said Luís Lima, national secretary of the Cape Verdean Public Administration Unions (Sintap).

Last November, health professionals suspended a strike notice after reaching an agreement with the Ministry of Health on several pending issues, which persist to this day. Among the current demands are the approval and implementation of the Career, Functions and Remuneration Plans (PCFR) for medical and nursing careers and the National Institute of Public Health (INSP), with effect from January 2024.

Professionals also demand the negotiation of the level of career classification in functional classification groups, the recruitment of recently graduated doctors for integration into specific services, and a salary adjustment for professionals in central hospitals, which were not included in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Additionally, they want to complete the qualification of specialist doctors and pay back payments since February 2021.

Another highlight is the completion of the classification of nurses with a degree and the publication of the results of the clinical analysis technician competition.

Cape Verde has around 4,000 health professionals, members of seven unions. So far, the Ministry of Health has not commented on the situation.