Conditioned Salary for Doctors

Conditioned Salary for Doctors / Jeovany Jimenez Vega
Posted on September 20, 2015

Jeovany Jimenez Vega, 14 September 2015 — Speaking of rumors — it's been
going around for months, but nothing official has yet been said about it
— there is a rumor that the Ministry of Public Health will increase the
monthly salary of doctors in Cuba to 5,000 Cuban pesos (equivalent to a
little more than $200 US). This would be very good news, but on the
island things are seldom what they seem, and according to what is
rumored it could also be a rotten deal: to receive this salary the
worker will have a sign a contract — which apparently will not be
elective — in which he or she commits to not traveling outside of Cuba
during the following five years, or perhaps ten years according to other
versions. And it is also said that in the eastern provinces this
document has already been presented to the workers.

If this is true, it would be sheer nonsense to subordinate this salary
to something that has no relation to our healthcare performance. Like in
every contract, the one allegedly being proposed would clearly establish
working days and hours, it would fix the rules of discipline and
standards in relation to employer/employee and also recognize the rights
to our twice-yearly two-week paid vacations, but at this point the
powers of the administration would stop. What we decide to do with our
free time is outside the administrative jurisdiction of the center and
its ministry, it is something completely personal is not for anyone else
to make these choices. Then, if it is clear that this is an unrelated
matter, it would be absurd to make such a requirement.

Of the recent measures announced by the newspaper Granma, theoretically
we can infer that the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) has become
aware, although very late, of the severity of the health care situation
in the country, but conditioning a salary as deserved as it is long
postponed on something so personal and alien to our work as what we do
in our free time, would be a misplaced imprudence.

Such an attitude from our ministry would show that at bottom, nothing
has changed. This posture greatly tarnishes the intended spirit of
reconciliation of the new proposed policy, and belies the alleged "good
intentions" of the Cuban authorities towards those healthcare
professionals who choise to remain in Cuba or who want to return after
working for a short time abroad. Behind such conditionality one can see
the gleam in the eye of the tiger, the always authoritarian gesture, the
same despotism, in another disguise and other trappings, but in the end
the very same despotism as always.

Could it be that so much time of impositions blinded that forever, that
pride will end up annulling judgment? Can they no longer do anything
truly clean? Will they ultimately be incapable of sincere propositions
and everything will be left, one more time, in an opportunistic
simulation, in a perpetual dissimulation.

Of course, signing or not signing such a contract would be a matter that
each one has the full right to accept or not according to their personal
decision, but these professionals should know that once they sign it,
this document would place them in an unjust position of subordination
and would be a legal yoke in the hands of the administration, which will
undoubtedly use it without hesitation when the time comes to justify
future arbitrariness.

Personally, I never would sign it. It is not a question of wanting or
not wanting to travel outside Cuba tomorrow, it is that here there is a
principal much more elemental: that is the right to choose to do so or
not always belongs only to me. So it is a simple matter.

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