Health Line 24 will investigate fake calls on day of strike ... - The Associated Press

company administrator who manages the Health Line 24 revealed that half of the workers did not attend Saturday’s service, without any prior notice. Luis Pedroso Lima added that the line received a “high number” of false calls, whose origin has promised to find out.

Nurses who make telephone answering concentrated at the door of the offices in Lisbon and Porto, in protest against the redundancies they consider to be a “clear retaliation” for “not having accepted lower wages and require an employment contract instead of illegal fake green receipt, “he told Lusa employee. Downtime extends for 24 hours, from 8 am Saturday.

Speaking to Lusa, the administrator Luis Pedroso Lima said the service worked with half the employees. “Obviously this dispute always disrupts the operation of the line,” admitted the company administrator LCS responsible for this line of the National Health Service

Luis Pedroso Lima said that the Health Line 24 received “a high number of false calls,” which were off “after six seconds of communication.” “As this is a service of public interest, which is the cause of people’s health, such calls seriously disturbs the clinical quality of the work we have been doing,” he said. Without wanting to anticipate who attributes this “high number” of false calls, promised to “investigate” its origin, through “a careful analysis of the situation.”

also the Director-General of Health, Francis George, proved apprehensive with the problem. “False calls can create serious problems, since the citizens in the event of serious, would be without this service available,” he said.

Francis George considers “absolutely essential, under the contract, the operation of the line, while maintaining the quality that has always been recognized.” The line is operated by a private company but it is the Directorate General of Health is responsible for overseeing the quality of the service entity.

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statements of the coordinator of the Left Bloc Catarina Martins, who scored 24 Health as an example of what happens when you privatize public services, Francis George recalled that the line “has always traveled by private companies, under a contract was signed following tenders as the present. “

“We are facing a service that works with high quality and is recognized by the people as having great quality and reducing unnecessary demand for emergency care, which has always been operated by private companies,” he said.

Payment falls 1.75 euro per hour
Luis Pedroso Lima explained that the reduction of the amount paid per hour to employees due to the decrease of the amount that the state pays the company and that this year will be “70% lower than the amount originally contracted.” The company’s proposal is to download the currently paid 8.75 euros per hour of work for seven euros, “still greater than five euros per hour charged in NHS hospitals,” he said.

In relation to employees who did not work on Saturday, the administrator cautioned: “We are not facing a strike, because that would presuppose a notice of strike not even been told that this would happen.”

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On Monday, the LCS back to meet with the Union of Portuguese nurses, hoping to hear this representative organization of workers “concrete proposals”.