AKP, MHP submit bill on protection of healthcare workers from violence

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on April 8 submitted a bill proposal to the parliament speaker's office on the issue of measures against violence committed to healthcare workers.

The law proposal for an amendment to the basic law of health services aims to strengthen penalties for violence towards healthcare workers. Under the bill, penalties for threatening, insulting, injuring, or hindering healthcare workers from doing their duties would be increased by 50 percent. In the proposal, "postponement of the sentence," is removed in these types of crimes against healthcare workers.

According to this proposal, the penalty for an attack on healthcare workers leading to injury will be between one-and-a-half years and four-and-a-half years, for threatening them will be between nine months and three years, for insulting them between four-and-a-half months and three years, and these penalties will not be postponed.

"The bill will be debated by the Justice Committee on Monday, but it might be incorporated into the penal reform bill being debated by the whole parliament," AKP lawmaker Ramazan Can told Anadolu Agency.

If it is added to the penal reform bill, it could skip the committee, he added. He was referring to a proposal by the ruling party for amendments in the enforcement of sentences that are currently being debated in the parliament's general assembly.

The lawmaker said that Turkey tried to take the best measures to stem the pandemic by highlighting the frontline fight of healthcare workers. "We're in a national mobilization against the coronavirus. At such a time, the bill aims to dissuade people from the ill-treatment of healthcare workers," Can said.

"We want to give...