NEWS

Clash between gov’t, EOPYY doctors intensifies with contracts threat

The Health Ministry was on Friday expected to start terminating the contracts of doctors and employees of EOPYY, Greece’s main healthcare provider, who are on strike to protest government cutbacks but who are also allegedly receiving visits from insured patients in their private practices.

Deputy Health Minister Antonis Bezas indicated, in comments to Mega channel on Friday, that the changes would affect some 700 doctors who maintain private clinics, noting that unionists were misleading the majority of EOPYY medics.

Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, for his part, insisted in comments to Skai television that plans for an overhaul of EOPYY would not be changed. «The government will not be blackmailed, and I mean it,» he said. «A doctor can’t strike in the morning and then run a surgery in the afternoon and get paid by EOPYY,» he said.

EOPYY doctors, who have extended their strike through December 9 in protest at troika-imposed reforms, were to hold a rally in central Athens on Friday at noon.

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