Tunisian healthcare workers strike to demand reforms

Several thousand Tunisian healthcare workers launched a general strike Thursday and protested in the capital to demand better public hospital management and a law regulating their status after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nurses and technicians working in public hospitals gathered in front of the health ministry in Tunis, carrying placards reading "public health is a national asset", among other slogans, an AFP journalist said.

The protesters demanded a specific law to regulate their status, highlighting that they had been on the front lines of the fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak and continued to work through the crisis, unlike other civil servants.

"During the COVID-19 crisis, there were two or three sectors that did not stop working and that assumed their responsibilities for the country," said Othmane Jallouli, a trade union leader from the General Health Federation.

"But as usual, we (healthcare workers) are on the front lines of the war and the last to be thanked."

Current legal provisions, common to all civil servants, are not tailored to healthcare work and do not allow for certain overtime hours to be paid, demonstrators lamented.

The strike took place across all public hospitals in the country after a call from the powerful Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), according to which only emergency services were working on Thursday.

While Tunisian medical workers are well-trained, the country's public hospitals suffer from a lack of resources and poor management.

Tunisia this week lifted the majority of restrictions put in place in early March to combat the novel coronavirus.

The country has reported 1,128 cases of the virus, including 50 deaths, and there are currently no hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

A few new cases are confirmed each day, the majority among people repatriated via quarantine centres.