Tensions flare at Athens hospital during Mitsotakis visit

[InTime News]

Tensions flared Wednesday greeting astatine Attikon General University Hospital successful western Athens during a visit by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis to inaugurate the hospital’s renovated exigency departments funded done the EU’s betterment fund.

Hospital workers held a protestation extracurricular the installation implicit the state of nationalist healthcare, accusing the authorities of prioritizing privatization implicit meaningful support for the system. The protestation escalated into clashes with police, who had been stationed astatine the ιστοσελίδα since aboriginal morning. Officers from respective units, including riot police, used chemic irritants and batons to disperse demonstrators.

“Our mobilization, nary substance what they do, will hap and will beryllium successful,” said George Sideris, caput of the Athens-Piraeus Hospital Doctors Association (EINAP) and the infirmary employees’ union.

Workers, who staged a work stoppage from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., issued a statement saying the nationalist wellness system is being “traded and privatized for the payment of large-scale contractors, manufacturers, shipowners and pharmaceutical companies.”

They cited unsafe staff shortages, closed operating rooms, debased wages, and unpaid overtime.

“We will not capitulate to the argumentation that is destroying nationalist healthcare and our lives,” the statement added.