Kyiv officials 'forcing medical practitioners to leave their trade union,' says Kanavarska

Kyiv, April 28 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Kyiv City Administration is forcing medical practitioners to leave their trade union, Council Head of the Kyiv City Healthcare Workers Trade Union Larysa Kanarovska has claimed.

"After the council's plenum on April 21, Kyiv officials ordered Kyiv head doctors to make the capital's medical practitioners leave their trade union," Kanarovska said at a press conference in the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Tuesday.

According to her, Kyiv officials gave this command to the heads of the Territorial Medical Associations (TMO).

Kanarovska said that doctors are forced to write requests to cancel their memberships or refuse to pay membership fees, which automatically results in their exclusion from the trade union.

She said that the Kyiv City Healthcare Workers Trade Union has around 90,000 members, and will be 100 years old this year.

Head of the State Committee for Regulatory Policy and Entrepreneurship in Kyiv Vitaliy Apostolov said that the actions of the Kyiv officials look like an attempt to seize the organization.

He stressed that the law prohibits state intervention in the activity of non-governmental organizations.