Natalia Vitela / Reform Agency
Wednesday, January 04, 2023 | 9:30 p.m.
Mexico City.- In 2022, the ISSSTE detected 5,571 cases of absence or non-compliance with hours of doctors and paramedics, most of them unionized, who usually have two jobs whose schedules overlap.
Given this, the agency indicated, it implemented the biometric registration of assistance for the control and permanence of health personnel during the working day.
This was the reason for disagreement among the staff, who demonstrated this Wednesday outside the ISSSTE Adolfo López Mateos Hospital.
Dissenters complained that they now have to sign in at the hospital biometrically rather than by signing, which has been the custom for decades.
This measure, according to Norma Liliana Rodríguez, president of the National Executive Committee of the ISSSTE National Union of Workers, was taken unilaterally.
Rodríguez specified that they do not disagree with this registration mechanism, but with the fact that there has been no negotiation and it has been imposed on them.
It was not considered, he warned, the work situations of doctors, who often work overtime when surgery is prolonged and are not paid. “Nothing by force, everything by negotiation,” she demanded.
He also denounced that ISSSTE workers and beneficiaries are treated as second-rate personnel. Pedro Zenteno, director of ISSSTE, has refused to negotiate, accused the leader.
The nearly 50 health workers and administrative personnel from this hospital and from other ISSSTE clinics who demonstrated also complained about the precarious conditions in which they work.
“The reality is that what we see in the workplace is a lack of medicines; huge lines,” Rodríguez said.
“The surgical instruments are in terrible condition and so many doctors bring their instruments to work. Most of the health workers bring their oximeter, their stethoscope, their blood pressure monitor, their thermometer,” he said.
The nurse Gloria Martínez denounced that on many occasions she has to buy her supplies to provide care.
“A baumanometer costs 700, 800 pesos or more,” he said.
