Doctors who benefited from free education to pay back the costs!

I refer to the headline under the caption ‘Private Medical School graduates must pass the licensing examination’.

The deans of the eight medical faculties have made this suggestion. They also say the licensing examination will be similar to the examination that foreign medical graduates must pass to be qualified. This seems to be a fair and reasonable recommendation with regard to the private medical school graduates. 

But why not allow the SAITM graduates to sit for the same final examination as the graduates of the medical faculty. Prof. Nilanthi De Silva has also recommended further clinical training for SAITM graduates. Why are these graduates deprived of clinical training at Government hospitals? What right has an occupational group furthering its interests like a trade union to prevent the authorities from acting in the public interest? The public interest is not the same as the private occupational interest of the doctors who like in the craft guilds of the Middle Ages want to determine the entry of newcomers to the craft to keep up the level of earnings of the craft. These restrictions were swept aside with the Industrial Revolution which made modern progress possible. Let us not allow an occupational group dictate the entry to the occupation as in the Middle Ages. 

Modernisation requires free and open competitive entry to any occupation. That is the rationale for a free market economy. Let us not allow the GMOA to disrupt the free market economy which emerged after the Industrial Revolution. If not for the free market economy with free competition, modern developments would not have taken place. Let us maintain the free market economy by charging for higher education which is a privilege of the few and not a mass benefit. 

If they are to enjoy the right to private practice they should be called upon to reimburse the cost of the free medical education provided by the people who are income-wise much, much worse off than them. 

These doctors education was paid for by the public and only 49% of them got selected on merit. The others have no right to talk about the entry requirements unless they are willing to do away with the district quota system. 

There is no case for free medical education unless the doctors who benefit from it pay back the costs to the public. Why not call upon doctors who benefited from free education to pay back the costs from their earnings if they are to be allowed private practice. 

Raja Senanayake, Rtd. CCS