A special commission composed of representatives of the Instituto Dominicano de Seguro Social (IDSS), the Asociación Medica Dominicana (AMD), and the AMD’s IDSS medical group (AMDIDSS) will try to come to an agreement to end the over six-month-old strike of AMD doctors in IDSS hospitals. The AMD general strike, which ended in the Ministry of Public Health hospitals on 30 April, has now been reduced to a simple conflict between the AMDIDSS and the IDSS, which unlike the Ministry, has refused to pay the striking doctors’ salaries for the months of January, February and March, during which all AMD members stayed away from work. The director of the IDSS, Dr. Orestes Guerrero, claims that the organization does not have the funds to pay the doctors, a statement which has prompted some prominent business leaders whose employees are part of the IDSS system to call for an audit.
In related news, the president of the AMD, Dr. Francisco Cano Gonzalez, and the Minister of Public Health, Dr. Victor Garcia Santos, met with an affectionate hug after trading verbal barbs during most of the AMD’s work stoppage in public hospitals from 30 October to 30 April.
17-23 May 1996