Just what the doctors ordered: Hong Kong's senior public hospital medics to get 3pc pay rise after rare high-profile protest
Hospital Authority board approves higher wages for around 2000 senior medics
Senior doctors at public hospitals have won their fight for the same 3 per cent pay rise other senior public servants get, with the Hospital Authority bowing to pressure from the biggest protest by medical workers in eight years.
The 28-strong board of the authority voted "unanimously" yesterday to grant its 2,000-odd senior public doctors the salary demand, its chairman, Professor John Leong Chi-yan, said. The vote came a day after 1,300 doctors staged a sit-in at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei.
The rare protest had seen the health minister and the authority's top leader turn up to listen to their appeal.
"We welcome the initial positive response from the authority," said Dr Pierre Chan Pui-yin, president of protest organiser the Public Doctors' Association.
Details of the arrangement would be discussed within a month, Leong said.
Earlier this month, the public-funded authority decided against upping the wages of its senior employees, including administrators, in line with the 3 per cent for senior civil servants that was based on the civil service's 2013 pay-level survey report.