While they met last Thursday with the Minister of Health to inform him of their demands, the community pharmacists, represented by the central trade unions, decided to maintain the national strike scheduled for this Thursday, April 13.
The meeting last Thursday between the Minister of Health, Khalid Ait Taleb, and the national trade union centers representing the pharmaceutical sector, including the National Federation of Pharmacists’ Unions of Morocco (FNSPM), the Confederation of Pharmacists’ Unions in Morocco (CSPM), the National Union of Pharmacists of Morocco (UNPM), the Federation of Pharmacists of Morocco (FPM), therefore seems not to have convinced the pharmacists to give up the national strike still planned for next Thursday.
During this meeting, the pharmacists were able to discuss the reform and the misunderstandings accumulated in the sector, which have become an obstacle to professional practice and the cause of the deterioration of the economic conditions of many pharmacies, and exchange around ” misinterpretation » profit margins achieved by pharmacists in the annual report of the Court of Auditors.
In a joint statement, the four representatives declared that these two situations have harmed the pharmaceutical body and its image in the national public opinion, “ at a time when national pharmacies are doing a good job serving their country and their citizens“.
They explain that during the meeting, the Minister openly expressed the Ministry’s willingness to cooperate with national trade union centers and to open channels of dialogue, in order to achieve the principle of a participatory approach with professionals to solve the various professional issues in the pharmacy sector.
In addition, the centers indicate, after a serious and responsible discussion which lasted four hours, that they have resumed their association with the Maison du Pharmacien, with the aim of strengthening consultation and taking the necessary decisions required by this phase.
The pharmacists have thus announced that they will not give up the national strike scheduled for Thursday, April 13, 2023, given that the meeting with the ministry ” remains preliminary and that its characteristics are not clear, nor the extent of the Ministry’s involvement in handling the file of the pharmacists’ claims, in the light of the professional tensions that the sector is experiencing in the current circumstances and of a rupture with professionals that lasts for several years“.
The national trade union centers have notably expressed their intention to review their strike program, in agreement with all the local pharmacy unions, in the event that the ministry intervenes in the coming days concerning the claims of pharmacists, whose files overlap those of other departments, reviewing the previously announced second strike for two consecutive days.
Moreover, ” notWe renew, through this strike, our determination and call on all national pharmacies to mobilize widely to make this historic milestone in the history of the profession of pharmacist in Morocco a success, in order to see on the horizon a renewed pharmacist model, which restores professional pharmacists to their rightful place in the national health system, like developed countries“, conclude the unions.