La Paz, 10 APR ( EFE).-thousands of doctors today resumed the strike against the Decree of the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, which increases its 6 to 8 hour workday, at the beginning of a wave of Trade Union and social conflicts that the Government tries to stop legal action, on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.
Doctors resume their protest after the Ministry of Health announced that he keeps the Decree, despite the fact that last week had agreed to discuss the day, which led to a truce of the strike which began on March 28.
The President of the Medical College of Bolivia, Alfonso neighborhoods, told reporters that the strike resumes “to achieve the repeal of the Decree, because it is illegal and unworkable”.
In the clinics of peace Hospital, doctors and nurses clashed with supporters of the Government requiring them to return to work and that they were driven by the force of the place.
Barrios denied that the strike violates the Constitution, as the Government claims, and defended its right to keep the labour conquest of 6 hours a day of work, which dates from 1970.
Argued that longer hours of work do not improve health care, which in his view requires more and better hospitals, because Bolivia are half of the 20th century, when the country had half of its current 10 million.
The President of the Medical Association said that while Bolivia spent on health annually $87 per inhabitant, in neighbouring Chile the figure is ten times greater.
According to neighborhoods, the strike is backed by 25,000 physicians, most other so many specialists in health, which however maintain emergency services.
The Minister of labour, Daniel Santalla, accused of “criminal” the strike and threatened to declare the illegal, as it did with previous stoppages of physicians in 24 to 48 hours, while other authorities are demanding the intervention of the Prosecutor’s Office.
Medical protest precedes a general strike called for Wednesday by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), the largest trade union organization of the country against the wage increase of 7 per cent decided by Morales for 2012, described as inadequate.
La COB requests the Government to take into account the “family basic basket”, which costs $ 1,192 per month, equal to ten minimum wages, according to the unions.
The minimum wage in Bolivia is $117 per month and salary average of 546, according to figures from 2011.
Addition, there are announcements of protests in the South of the country, by a regional dispute over the rights of a field of natural gas that are managed by the Spanish Repsol, and demonstrations by unions of drivers, seeking to increase the rates of transport and neighbourhood associations that oppose this.
But the largest protest will begin April 25, with a new March to La Paz of Amazonian indigenous people who defend the indigenous territory and Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (Tipnis) of the construction of a highway financed by Brazil.
Indigenous leader Fernando Vargas confirmed today that March, while Morales announced the cancellation of the contract with the Brazilian company OAS, on the grounds that the Builder failed deadlines of work.
Vargas said that “the President lies and you are looking for is slow mobilization” and “distract people”.
The President of the Confederation of peoples indigenous peoples of the East of Bolivia (Cidob), Adolfo Chávez, told Efe that the Morales announcement “is not a guarantee” because you can hire another company to continue the works.
Union leaders accuse Morales, President of coca growers associations, raw material for making cocaine from “trial” protests, forgetting himself promoted blockades and strikes against earlier Governments.
The Attorney General, Mario Uribe, said that the Constitution establishes that health services can not be interrupted, and that doctors will be investigated for breaching their duties, leave their positions and inciting the collective abandonment of work.
“Not the strike, is penalizing what is going to investigate is whether a health service, planned as a criminal offence in the criminal code has been interrupted” justified Uribe and said serving ex officio, not by moral order.
However, the leader of the deputies of the ruling movement toward socialism (MAS), Gallen Bonifaz, told Efe that sought the intervention of the Prosecutor’s Office against the medical strike, because it is an act of “sedition”, and Ministers and other official leaders come calling days ago.
Bonifaz added that doctors are entitled to their claims, but demanded that first “they exhausted the dialogue”, because “you can not play with the health of Bolivians”.
