Hundreds of nurses from the provinces of Tehran, Esfahan, Qom, Mazandaran and Gilan, gathered in front of the Presidential Office in Tehran on Sunday, December 14. They were demanding a meeting with the Iranian regime’s president, Hassan Rohani, so that they could bring their demands to his attention.

The demonstrators said that similar protests were being held simultaneously in other cities, including Mashhad and Yazd.

The reason for holding a protest in front of the Presidential Office was to protest against the big income disparity between doctors and nurses and the government’s foot-dragging in setting new pay rates for nursing staff. The protesters said that while medical pay rates had grown by 400% there had been no change in nurses’ wages.

Nurses’ representatives at the Tehran protest stressed that their main demand was that doctors’ pay – in accordance with international standards – should be no more than three times nurses’ wages. They also said that officials’ neglect of nurses’ living standards had resulted in a rise in the number of nurses emigrating or leaving the profession.

Organisers said that many more nurses would have joined the demonstrations if restrictions had not been placed on them by hospital officials and the need to honour their shift patterns.

Iranian Workers’ Solidarity Network [2]