“Nurses will enter the heavy and unsanitary. The government will legislate as soon as the required preparatory work is completed” according to what the Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis said, responding to the president of PASOK Nikos Androulakis, in relation to the content of the amendment tabled today by his party and proposing the inclusion of nurses in the Heavy Regulation and Unhygienic.

“I have already said, before you, I have announced it to POEDIN, in two of my meetings, that for the nurses, their status will be equalized and the heavy and unhealthy ones will be included. Legislation, however, is not done on the fly. It is done as it should be. It goes through the General Accounting Office of the State, they have measured exactly how much it costs us, who it concerns, but yes, we are committed that this will be done, and we have said so. Prior to your amendment, I have announced this twice and will certainly do so when I am ready to legislate properly, I make that clear. Because indeed the nurses there have been wronged and I don’t want anyone to feel wronged by the system“, said the Minister of Health.

Against N. Androulakis

In the amendment it submitted to the bill of the Ministry of Health, PASOK states that a few days ago, the government rejected its amendment for the subordination of all health facilities to the heavy and unhealthy, “with flimsy excuses and inaccurate data. However, he accepted, with a statement from Mr. Georgiadis, that the request is fair for the nursing staff. That is why he retracts his position on the inclusion of all without exception the health workers” and proposes the inclusion of nurses.

The president of PASOK, Nikos Androulakis, said that today some of the nurses who work in the private sector are classified as heavy and unhealthy, but this is not the case for nurses who work in public hospitals. He urged the Minister of Health, just as PASOK is today taking a step for consensus in favor of the NHS, for the government to take a step of consensus and include nurses in the heavy and unhealthy category.

“Listen, Mr. Androulakis, we did have an important disagreement last week. Not with all of PASOK. With both PASOK. I remind you, you had tabled an amendment, for the 22nd time, which requested the total integration of all the staff of the National Health Service into the heavy and unhealthy. I explained to you that this is a populist, dangerous amendment for the NHS, that whoever made you sign it 22 times, wanted you to blow up the NHS”, said the Minister of Health and added: “We had a disagreement. You said I was lying and that no one would leave the NHS and that your amendment would be implemented after 12 years. The next day, PASOK’s Political Planning secretary, Mrs. Diamantopoulou, said that it is not 7,500 that will leave but only 2,000. He also said that PASOK’s amendment should not be for the entire NHS but only for some nurses. Indeed, in this I said that it is a reasonable request. I am glad that after a week Mr. Androulakis agrees with Georgiadis and Diamantopoulos. It’s a trend toward sanity, after the 22 times you tabled the wrong amendment. You came to Parliament to tell us today that 22 times you tabled the wrong amendment and we needed to have this debate to get it right.”

In any case, Mr. Georgiadis, addressing the president of PASOK, “out of the 100,000 people you wanted to put in prison, you have limited it to a few thousand. It is a progress of PASOK, from populist to seriousness. I thank Ms. Diamantopoulou for whatever touch of seriousness he put on PASOK, with this intervention”.