translated from Spanish: Oaxaca health workers are unemployed due to lack of budget

On September 15, specialist and general practitioners, nurses, radiologists, therapists, social workers, workers, among other employees, who had worked from two years to more than ten as eventual for the hospitals of the Health Services of Oaxaca were left without contracts and, therefore, without work. 
“Around 2,600 workers, out of a total of 18,000, we are unemployed, more or less 400 are doctors, one thousand 500 are nurses and nurses and the rest are diverse personnel, from radiologists to nurses,” says Luis Vázquez, who worked for six years as a pediatric infectologist at the Oaxacan Children’s Hospital. 
Her partner, Abigail Pineda, denounces that from this day 15 she did not renew her contract, after four years of working as an eventual. “I was in charge of the COVID area in the morning shift and Dr. Luis Vásquez was in charge in the evening, we both ran out of work and the Oaxacan Children’s Hospital ran out of pediatric infectologists, there were only two of us.” 

Specialists say that twelve other doctors, including a hematologist who cares for children with cancer, a neonatologist, a pediatric surgeon, eight general pediatricians, were also left without a contract in this hospital, which has a staff of 570 workers; 32 nurses and other laboratory staff, x-rays, camillería, physical therapy, and three administrative staff, for a total of 57 people. 
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The doctors narrate that after a day of protests over the dismissals, last Friday they met with the head of the Health Services of Oaxaca, Juan Carlos Márquez Heine, and with the governor, Alejandro Murat. 

In that meeting at the Government House, they say that the governor told them that for two six-year terms or more where the money was taken for the payment of their salaries was what the unionized personnel had to contribute to the ISSSTE or the SAT and that this had generated a financial hole that was already unsustainable. 
The communication office of the state government confirmed to Animal Politico that this is true and pointed out that during the past administrations of Gabino Cué and Ulises Ruiz around 5 thousand places were generated for which there was no budget and to comply with those labor commitments, the government made use of the resources that should go to the SAT and the ISSSTE. 
This government, said the press office, had the will to fix this problem almost from the beginning of the administration, but the earthquake and the pandemic were crossed and now a solution is being sought with the support of the Federation to rehire the staff, at least those in “white coat”. 
According to the press office, of the 2,600 workers who were left without a contract, only 400 or 500 are doctors and nurses and the rest are administrative. “The commitment is to rehire only those who need the health sector and that is why the lists will be reviewed one by one.” 
Pediatric infectologist Luis Vasquez says it’s false that most are administrative. “What happens is that they had us registered like this, and maybe they don’t know, only in this way is it understood that they have fired so many staff that is essential in hospitals, but it is the way to have cheap labor because they paid us less, a unionized specialist doctor earns 16 or 17 thousand pesos a fortnight and the contract 13 thousand.”
Abraham Stuart Gutiérrez Lindner, a pediatrician dismissed from the Community Hospital of Ixtlán after seven and a half years of work with temporary contracts, says that 17 people were left without work in total from this place: 4 general practitioners, 2 pediatricians, a surgeon, a radiologist, a laboratory worker and nursing staff. 
This hospital, he says, has a payroll of about 100 or 120 people, “but for example there were three pediatricians, one does not show up because he is on the union committee, for a long time he has not presented himself to the hospital and the other two no longer renewed the contract, that is, there is no pediatrician already in the hospital. There is no doctor certified in neonatal resuscitation, that is a risk for every delivery and every caesarean section.” 
The population that this hospital attends, says the specialist, is from the entire district of Ixtlán and the northern highlands of the state. “For a million inhabitants in the region there are only community hospitals, there is no general hospital and in which I was arriving people who live up to eight hours away, because of the orography that is complicated, now they are going to arrive and they are going to tell them that there is no pediatrician,” says Abraham Stuart.
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Ofmetrio Santos, general surgeon, who, until September 15, was a casual worker for 12 years at the General Hospital of San Pedro Pochutla, lists that from there they fired, out of a total of about 150 workers of the institution, 40 people: 2 gynecologists, 2 pediatricians, a neonatologist pediatrician, an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, 18 nursing people, an x-ray technician, a laboratory technician, kitchen staff, stretcher bearers. 
“This is the largest hospital on the coast, it has 60 beds, and it is the oldest, it is 25 years old. I was there 12 years, I have seen four processes of formalization of personnel and it never touched me, although I have never committed a fault in my work, I was the only surgeon who stayed in the pandemic to attend to emergency surgeries, because the others left shelter. ” 
The doctors point out that this is the case: they wait several years to be able to regularize their employment situation, while they see people who are relatives or acquaintances of people from the union, from section 35 of the National Union of Workers of the Ministry of Health (SNTSA), obtain the base. In fact, they also accuse that there is sale of those places. 
That is why they ask to be present at the meetings that the federal and state authorities will have to try to solve the problem, such as this Wednesday when the governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat, the head of the Health Institute for Welfare (Insabi), Juan Ferrer, and the head of the IMSS, Zoé Robledo, will meet. by order of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with whom two of the dismissed workers met briefly on Monday during the president’s visit to the state. 
While the situation is being settled, and as a way to have an active protest and continue to serve the population, groups of workers who were left without contracts have placed modules in different parts of the state to offer free consultations and check-ups and not leave people without attention.

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Original source in Spanish

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