The three major unions of nurses in the hospitals of the Ministry of Public Health have threatened to strike on 29 July, if previous agreements reached with the government are not honored. As well as the doctors in the public hospitals, who held a six-month work stoppage from October 1995 to April 1996, the longest in the history of the D.R., the nurses claim that terms such as salary raises, housing and insurance plans promised to them by the government through the Ministry of Public Health have not been honored, and that 29 July is the deadline to do so in order to avoid a general nationwide strike.
Deputy Altagracia Guzmán of the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD), speaking for the party whose leader Leonel Fernández will assume the presidency on 16 August, has urged the nurses’ unions to try to reach a settlement with the Ministry, or at least wait for the new government to take office. Deputy Guzmán said that the PLD’s government plan provides for the services and compensation that the nurses are demanding, and that only a peaceful government transition will guarantee that those demands are met.