Public hospital doctors organise sit-in to demand pay raise

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By staff writer, additional reporting by Ben Pang
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Senior medical staff are staging a sit-on tomorrow to ask to be given the same three per cent pay rise awarded to civil servants earlier this year

By staff writer, additional reporting by Ben Pang |
Published: 
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Doctors will put on their uniforms for the 90-minute protest tomorrow.

Senior doctors at public hospitals are planning a mass sit-in in their fight for an extra three per cent pay rise from the Hospital Authority - backdated for one year.

The Public Doctors' Association is calling on members to put on their uniforms and assemble at the main lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital tomorrow afternoon for the 90-minute protest.

Earlier this year, the government gave civil servants an extra three per cent pay rise, backdated to last October. The association said some 2,000 medical staff should enjoy the same pay rise, but the authority rejected their demands.

Association chairman Dr Pierre Chan Pui-yin said on Sunday that the authority's pay adjustments have always been linked with the civil service - until now.

An authority spokesman stressed it could not afford the extra pay rise.

Benjamin So Yu-fai, a former Young Post student contributor and now a doctor at Kwong Wah Hospital, said medical staff deserve to be treated the same as civil servants. "Doctors in public hospitals took a pay cut in 2009 due to the financial crisis; why can't they enjoy a pay rise now?" said So.

Zareen Chiba, a medical student at the University of Hong Kong and a former contributor to Young Post's Brain Game and Top 10 columns, agreed. "Staff pay should be tied to that of the civil service, as the authority's duty is to manage hospitals that deliver public healthcare," she said.

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