Emergency Medical Care workers staged a protest across the country

Nation-wide protest of medical professionals and employees of Emergency Medical Aid took place on November 6. At exactly 12.00, ambulances from across the country switched on their lights and sirens for three minutes with the intention that this will continue for the rest of the week.

Demonstrators described their protest as "silent and deafening". In a letter to the media they demand decent pay, a change in the category of work, measures to attract new specialists and improve working conditions.

From October until the end of this year, the employees of the Emergency Medical Aid receive a monthly bonus of BGN 600 for doctors, mid-level clinical pracitioners - BGN 400, nurses - BGN 300, paramedics BGN 170 and ambulance drivers BGN 150. Protesters are demanding that these funds be maintained beyond 2023.

Caretaker Deputy Health Minister Alexander Zlatanov commented that estimates have been submitted to increase the salaries of emergency aid and Regional Health Inspectorates employees, but how and when this will happen depends on how next year's budget will be adopted.

"We are constantly working for them. Even you know that we have provided some funds for them to get on top of their salaries by the end of the year. In the next budget, we have also provided for salary increases - not only for emergency medical professionals, but also for Regional Health Inspectorates. Our estimates have been submitted to the Ministry of Finance to bring it into line with the new budget. I hope they accepted them according to how things will develop, whether there will be an extension of the old budget, now a purely technological problem is when and how these increases will be guaranteed," said Alexander Zlatanov, Deputy Minister of Health.

Images by Dessislava Kulelieva