Foreign Doctors In France, Including Algerians, Protest Over Wage Increase

Hundreds of medical practitioners, with non-EU graduations, who are working in French hospitals, called on the French Health Ministry, on Thursday, in Paris to end their precarious social situation, demanding wage increases, as reported by French public media on Sunday.

The demands were made by practitioners of many Maghreb countries, including Algeria. According to the same source, these doctors, pharmacists, dentists and midwives are often necessary for easy employment in many services. Nevertheless, 4,000 of them work under the title of “internal representation” or Associated Assistant Practitioners, who are low paid and have no prospects of change.

Protesters met at the invitation of the National Federation of Non-European Graduated Practitioners, with the support of some 15 syndicates of hospitals.

“I am doing the same job as others, but I am ashamed to look at the payroll. I have been a pediatrician for more than four years and I have been paid less than a nurse”, a protester said.

According to the organizers of the protest, these practitioners are also threatened with the impossibility of continuing to work in French hospitals by January 1, 2019, after practitioners who arrived in France before August 2010 were required to pass an exam to verify their certificates by passing a review after three years of practice, as 1000 of them failed to continue to work under these conditions, and to avoid their departure, the exception must be renewed for two years, which is not enough for the Federation of Practitioners, which considered that it is a “prolonged lengthening”. Meanwhile, 3,000 new foreign doctors have been appointed since the summer of 2010, and the three-year exam has now been canceled in favor of more selective competition.