Mèrida, Yucatàn, (May 12, 2021).- The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), through its study, ‘Compare careers 2021’ has identified that the monthly average earned by nursing staff in Mexico is approximately $10,320 pesos per month, however, in Yucatan, there are still people in this profession who earn an average $5,000 pesos a month, according to the State College of Nursing Professionals.
Nurse Cilvia Guadalupe Pool Baas, president of said college, recalled that the World Health Organization (WHO) designated 2020 as the International Year of Nursing and Midwifery Professionals, and without knowing it, their profession would become more visible, but due to the work they do in the middle of a pandemic caused by Coronavirus (Covid-19).
For Pool Baas, one of the important requests since before the arrival of the virus in Yucatecan territory is the payment of fair wages according to their preparation, good performance, and the long working hours they undertake every day.
In addition, given the false belief that health personnel who work in private institutions obtain high remuneration for their work, Pool Baas denied this social myth and specified that they are even those who earn much less.
“When the nursing staff works in a public institution and has a position, of course, it is in accordance with the category they have, but the simple fact of having a base means that in terms of salary it is good, but this is not the case when they work in private clinics ”, she indicated.
The IMCO figures indicate that the nursing career ranks 33rd in terms of the amount of salary of the professions in the country.
In addition, in Mexico there are 482 812 thousand people who have studied the nursing career, of which around five thousand are in Yucatan and despite the fact that there are men in this sector, they represent 20 percent of the total, while 80 percent are women.
Of the total number of people in Mexico dedicated to nursing, at least 4.1 percent are unemployed and another 23.6 percent are in informal employment.
76.8 percent of the nursing staff is in the areas of health and social assistance services, while the rest work in the areas of retail trade, government activities and international organizations, manufacturing industries and other services.
However, as far as health institutions are concerned, Pool Baas insisted that one of the requests in which they will persist is that the salary of nursing workers improves, both in public and private clinics, but especially in the latter.
“In the school there are heads of private clinics and we have commented that that salary has to be improved because they study a lot and it is not fair that sometimes they earn less than the minimum wage,” she emphasized.
On the other hand, the director of the school said she understood that people agree to work in private clinics where the pay is low because they prioritize the fact of acquiring experience or, before the need to obtain income after having left the university.
“There are hospitals that have improved the labor situation, such as the Mérida clinic and the Medical Center of the Americas (CEMA), but there are others that do not take this condition into account for working people,” she added.
In the case of the public sector, Cilvia said that those people who are not based in hospitals and who are only temporarily present, also receive little salary and do not have benefits.
“As an association, this is one of our insistence with the corresponding authorities, because we need public policies that guarantee us better working conditions and, for example, until now we have not heard from a representative who makes proposals for this sector,” she said.
An interesting fact about this career, unlike others, is that at the national level women are better paid compared to men since they may earn up to a thousand pesos more.
When they study nursing in public schools, people invest about $49,650 pesos and it takes them about 16.2 months to recover their investment; In the case of private institutions, the investment is $878,318 pesos, and to recover this amount they have to work for 286.4 months.
Source: La Jornada Maya
