Pharmacists of the National Health Service (SNS) are back on strike today, on the first of three days scheduled for this month, interspersed and in different ways, to demand progress in negotiations with the guardianship.
Today, the strike covers the entire mainland and autonomous regions, on the 27th it will take place in the districts of Beja, Évora, Faro, Lisbon, Portalegre, Santarém, Setúbal and in the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira and the 29th will be in the districts of Braga, Bragança, Porto Viana do Castelo and Vila Real, Aveiro, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Guarda, Leiria and Viseu.
After a meeting, in January, with the responsibility for Health considered by the union an “absolute disappointment”, the union structure says that there were other meetings in the meantime, but underlines that in none there were effective advances in the negotiations, considering that “there is a lack of political will to the Minister of Health” to resolve the situation.
Speaking to Lusa, when the strike notice was delivered, on the 29th of May, the president of the National Union of Pharmacists, Henrique Reguengo, said that the advances in the meetings were “very few” and in matters “that should have been in the negotiation”, giving as an example the 100 vacancies that should have been open until July of last year. The leader also recalled that, at the beginning of this year, only 34 had gone to the contest.
“In the institutions, the staff are completely insufficient and increasingly insufficient, because people are leaving (...). We have 1.000 pharmacists in the National Health Service (SNS) who are leaving”, warned Henrique Reguengo, adding: “Fortunately, pharmacists have a scientific training in faculties that gives them a wide range of possibilities”.
The valuation of the profession, with the consequent revision and updating of salary scales in view of the academic and professional qualifications of pharmacists, the full counting of service time in the SNS for the purposes of promotion and career progression and the effective linkage of pharmacists working in the services public with precarious contracts are some of the demands.
In addition, they require the adequacy of the number of pharmacists in the SNS to the needs and complexity of the pharmaceutical activities carried out, the recognition and approval of specialist titles awarded by the Order of Pharmacists and the definition and regulation of a “special and transitory process for regularizing access to pharmaceutical specialty/residency by pharmacists hired after March 01, 2020”.
Minimum services are foreseen, with the union proposing – according to prior notice – that they operate in services that work uninterruptedly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, suggesting a number of staff equal to that which guarantees operation on Sundays, in the night shift during normal holiday season.
SNS pharmacists were on strike for the first time in October and November of last year, in an unprecedented strike that had a membership of over 90%, according to union data.
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