CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Doctors in Venezuela's public health sector will receive a 50-per cent pay raise starting in November, President Hugo Chavez said Sunday. Hundreds of Venezuelan doctors protested in Caracas last month, demanding salary hikes among other issues.
"It's just and needed," Chavez said. The pay raise, which also includes additional bonuses for doctors working full-time in state-run medical facilities, "is justice for doctors," he said.
Chavez made the announcement during his weekly television and radio program, Hello President, which this week was transmitted live from a new campus of the state-run Bolivarian University in the eastern city of Maturin. During a program that lasted about seven hours, (this is true, btw, I have seen this show that goes out every Sunday - Queenie) Chavez said education spending has increased from 3 per cent of gross domestic product to about 9 per cent since he took office in 1999.
He also said a total of 336,000 students, many of them poor, are now enrolled in free higher education supplied by the government, nearly one-fourth of the country's total university enrolment. Chavez said other public universities such as Venezuela Central University are "elitist" and have traditionally denied education to the poor, therefore creating a need for the new network of free government-funded universities.
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