Pak Sahafat – Tens of thousands of British nurses stopped working on Wednesday to protest their working conditions and wages for the third time in the past month, bringing the country’s health system one step closer to collapse.
According to Pak Sahafat News Agency, Nurses in 55 medical centers in England stopped working at 7:30 in the morning and announced that this protest will continue until 20:30, i.e. 13 hours. They will strike again on Thursday from 7:30 to 20:30.
The protesting employees are demanding an increase in their wages, commensurate with the rate of inflation. The inflation index in England has reached 2 to 10 percent over the past year. According to the latest report of the British National Statistics Center, which was published today (Wednesday), the inflation rate reached 10.5% last December. Last November, the inflation index reached 11.1%, which was unprecedented in the last half century.
The Prime Minister of England has described inflation as the main challenge of this country and has promised to reduce it by half this year. A claim that seems unlikely from the point of view of economic experts, and it is predicted that inflation will not be less than 10% this year.
Robert Jenrick, UK’s deputy home secretary, says public sector workers will not be able to get a “significant” pay rise because inflation is falling. He told Sky News: I think if the international factors are moving in the right direction, the worst thing we can do domestically is to raise public sector wages significantly… We have to be very careful because inflation is a great evil.
The main nurses’ union known as RSN demands a five percent increase in nurses’ salaries in addition to the inflation rate, but it has declared its readiness for negotiation and compromise in this regard. However, the government has not taken any concrete action other than holding Syrian meetings and opposing the protestors’ request, and the nurses also plan to stop working in 73 British health centers on February 6 and 7.
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The results of the latest research show that most British people are dissatisfied with the performance of the country’s health system in the midst of a sharp drop in medical services and a widespread strike by doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers.
The joint findings of a survey conducted by the prestigious Yugao Institute and The Times of London show that according to two thirds of the British people, the level of medical services in this country is dire, and eighty percent believe that the situation has worsened over the past five years, that is, after the British exit from the European Union.
Studies conducted by the Times show that over the past 12 months, 50,000 more Englishmen than usual have died due to delays in providing medical services. Meanwhile, during Christmas week alone, the death toll increased by a fifth due to long waits for ambulances, cold weather and flu outbreaks.
The participants in this survey were pessimistic about the future of the healthcare system in this country and 58% said that in their opinion the situation will get worse in the next few years. According to statistical data, 63% do not believe that the medical service organization of this country can provide timely services in emergency situations.
The British National Health Service (NHS) was launched for the first time in 1948 and after the end of the Second World War in order to provide medical services to the injured and wounded in war, and currently, with one million and 600 thousand employees, it provides free of charge to the people.
The budget of this organization in the year of its establishment in 1948 amounted to 437 million pounds (today’s value is about 9 billion pounds) and this figure has reached about 136 billion pounds this year, which puts a lot of pressure on the government budget of this country.
This is while the economic conditions of England are in the worst conditions of the last half century due to several consecutive crises, and the country is experiencing a long period of economic stagnation, according to the head of the central bank.