Rebuilding burnt bridges

The tension between the Government and the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has boiled over on several occasions in the recent past over the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) issue, with doctors going on strike and students violently clashing with the law. Adding fuel to this blaze, the GMOA and the Government have found a new point of contention with the appointment of a new chairman to the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC). The issues between the two parties seem likely to continue with the public probably suffering the collateral damage.

The Government recently offered a few solutions to the longstanding SAITM issue which included making SAITM a non-profit entity run by a State-appointed trust, turning it into a public-private partnership or the Government taking over a majority stake in it and selling the rest on the stock market. The President also released a statement which promised the issuing of a gazette notification prohibiting SAITM from enrolling new students as well as preventing SAITM from awarding degrees to its existing students until some conditions – yet to be decided – were fulfilled.

The GMOA didn’t seem too impressed with these moves, stating that the simple demand of bring SAITM under the purview of the SLMC had still not been met.

The GMOA was recently talked out of full-scale strike action after discussions with religious leaders but it seems like the calm will be short-lived with a new issue hitting the headlines. The GMOA warned of indefinite strike action if the Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne appointed Prof. Colvin Gunaratne as the Chairman of the SLMC, violating the Medical Ordinance.

The alleged move came after the term of the outgoing Chairman Prof. Carlo Fonseka ended on 30 June after a five and a half year stint. The GMOA threatened to implement an indefinite strike if the Government failed to consider the recommendations made by the GMOA.

Meanwhile, the Government had mulled a proposal to form an alternative association to the GMOA, with the Health Minister claiming that a large number of doctors had expressed their willingness to form its core. In Parliament, Minister Senaratne had asked the members to create awareness amongst rural doctors so that they would come forward to form a new association. Intimidating the GMOA with the threat of establishing a new medical association will do little to help calm the stormy seas.

Government politicians remain adamant that these moves are motivated by those with political agendas while pointing to the fact that these were messes created by the previous administration against little to no resistance. 

However, the Government’s inability to act on these issues and the lack of foresight of successive governments have severely affected the chances for a quick and easy solution to this problem, further fuelling those who have vested political interests.

The need to set up a Higher Education Quality Assurance Authority to monitor and maintain standards at all private universities is a proposal that is being keenly looked at by the Government in order to set up a progressive framework which includes legal and other systems to enable universities to enter Sri Lanka. It seems like a system in which public universities can grow parallel to high quality private education facilities is something that should have been looked at, discussed and implemented at the outset, but there is no time like the present in order to avoid future quagmires like the SAITM one.