Vyskov, South Moravia/Prague, May 1 (CTK) – Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) proposed a 10-percent pay rise for Czech doctors and nurses in 2017 in the CSSD May Day Manifesto presented in Vyskov on Sunday.
Sobotka supported a 10-percent pay rise also for teachers and he said the minimum monthly wage should increase from the present 9900 crowns to 11,000 crowns next year.
He encouraged trade unions to press on firms that make higher profits to raise salaries. Czech economy is growing and the people should feel the prosperity, Sobotka said.
He said old people should have higher pensions, too.
Sobotka said the CSSD wants to deal with the critical situation in Czech health care and make the quality medical staff stay in the system.
On Tuesday, the government coalition parties will discuss the situation in health care. The Czech Doctors’ Chamber called on the government to work out a rescue plan. It recommended that the health insurance payments for children and pensioners go up and that a health tax be imposed on tobacco and alcohol. The health tax would compensate the regulatory fees paid by patients that Sobotka’ centre-left cabinet abolished.
But Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) does not want to give more finances to the healthcare system. He claims that the money is wasted.
Health Minister Svatopluk Nemecek (CSSD) told Czech Television (CT) on Sunday that a 10-percent pay rise for the medical workers would cost 3.5 billion crowns next year.
Along with the pay rise this year, Czech hospitals would need extra seven billion crowns for the higher salaries, Nemecek said.
He said the increased health insurance paid by the state on behalf of children, pensioners and other groups would bring roughly five billion crowns to the hospitals.
The state actually pays the insurance for a majority of the inhabitants, or for about six million people in the country with a population of 10.5 million. Now it pays 870 crowns a month for each of them and next year the monthly insurance should raise to 930 crowns, Nemecek said. “This is the absolute minimum,” he said, adding that the CSSD already told this to its coalition partners, the ANO movement and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL).
