SAITM in perspective: GMOA and SLMC utterly selfish

By Kusal Perera

The Daily FT on 5 August 2016 reported that the GMOA would not settle for any compromise and was pressing for a total takeover of SAITM and its hospital by the Government. It is unclear whether the GMOA wants SAITM as an institute to be taken over by the Government or its medical faculty only.

Many claims by the GMOA are very questionable since much of its leadership lacks credibility and integrity. 

The Daily FT quoted GMOA Co-secretary Dr. Haritha Aluthge as saying, “SAITM Chairman Dr. Neville Fernando and its Board have committed fraud in setting up the institute. On that basis there cannot be any Private-Public Partnership when the private party is an illegal entity.”

This is a very irresponsible and unsubstantiated claim by the GMOA. The legality of SAITM is yet to be questioned and challenged by the likes of the Registrar of Companies, the Fraud Bureau or any in that line of responsibility. Nor has the GMOA ever challenged it in a court of law. The SLMC has never said approval could not be given to SAITM because it was “illegal”. Approval to establish the South Asian Institute of Technology and Management (SAITM) was given to ‘Dr. Neville Fernando Investment Co. Pvt. Ltd.’ by the BOI-SL in 2010. Thus there is no illegality in it and the GMOA should be more honest and responsible in making accusations if they want their demands to be rationally discussed.

The GMOA campaign itself is not without political bias. Open protests against SAITM became the order of the day only during the past many months. Few political and trade union personalities and the IUSF moved in with the GMOA to picket, march and hold meetings against SAITM in the post-Rajapaksa era.

The SLMC, totally dominated by medics, decided in August 2015 to send a special inspection committee to SAITM headed by Prof. Rezvi Sheriff. It is now publicly discussed that the report submitted to the SLMC by its special committee was tampered with to suit the post-Rajapaksa protests led by the GMOA. What was thereafter sent under Prof. Carlo Fonseka’s signature to the Minister of Health in early September 2015 was the amended version that says SAITM should not be registered. 

Despite these protests and manipulations, even a cursory glance at events leading to the present conflict would show how everyone, including the GMOA, is at fault. In 2011, as the joint statement of medical faculty Deans rightly says, from ‘Technology and Management’, SAITM changed its name to ‘Technology and Medicine’ (still SAITM) to offer a MBBS degree from ‘Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy ‘, a Russian university approved and listed by the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC). 

The BOI-SL nevertheless did not provide approval for this request. SAITM was subject to clearance from the Health Ministry and the SLMC, which they never received. They in fact approached the UGC as well, supported by S.B. Dissanayake, the then Minister of Higher Education, and they were still unsuccessful. 

The SAITM management knew quite well that they were getting dragged into a conflict without approval for their medical degree. Yet from 2011, SAITM continuously enrolled students to its medical degree. This was an unnecessary high-handed decision by Dr. Fernando and his management at the expense of innocent students, who had other options with money available. That also makes parents complicit in putting their children in the firing line of a protracted conflict.

But all through these five years why didn’t the authorities bar SAITM from recruiting medical students? From Rajapaksa down to all Government ministers responsible for health and higher education, the SLMC and the GMOA, who take pride in interfering in decisions, are at fault. Perhaps there was wheeler-dealing too during those years. 

The letter to SAITM in 2011 by then SLMC President Dr. H.H.R. Samarasinghe reflects the space left for any compromise on SAITM. The SLMC did not warn SAITM against enrolling students. 

It only informed SAITM that the SLMC had no legal provision to register SAITM as a medical degree-awarding institute, although its collaborating academy in Russia was registered with the SLMC. Then Health Minister, Maithripala Sirisena, who was responsible for the health ministry’s decision, whose prior approval had to be obtained according to BOI-SL, also played hide and seek.

Free Education

Prof. Carlo Fonseka, appointed SLMC President in January 2012, with President Rajapaksa’s consent was perhaps instructed to sleep over SAITM all through the Rajapaksa era. So did the GMOA leadership. They wouldn’t make more noise than necessary lest the Rajapaksas would get disturbed. Thus for over five years until Rajapaksa was voted out in January 2015 everyone, including the GMOA, were only interested in bargains and deals that could mean something to them and their reputation.

This arrogant irresponsibility is evident in how the GMOA leadership now goes about with their anti-SAITM campaign. 

Their whole campaign is based on the single argument ‘Free Education’ does not allow privately paid education. The slogan is ‘Education is no product to be sold. Education is a right’. This very argument proves how ignorant and stupid all of them are. ‘Free Education’ was introduced with the ‘Kannangara Reforms’ adopted in November 1943 by the Ceylon State Council as Sessional Paper XXIV. Nowhere does it say private education is prohibited. The two main objectives of the Kannangara Reforms are (i) to establish a formal education system nationally with a common teaching syllabus and national exams and (ii) to develop a “conscious citizen”, who would accept diversity in society, respect each other’s cultural identities and participate in making intellectual decisions in using their votes.

In detailing its reforms, the Sessional Paper says private schools under the management of different religious faiths teaching what they decide will have to teach what’s in the national curricula and prepare students for national exams. ‘Free Education’ is then proposed for the larger majority of the population, the Donoughmore Commission report records as poor rural life with no proper services and facilities. That being a fact of life, the Kannangara Reforms introduced education at State expense to those who could not afford to ensure education to all. There’s nothing ‘free’ therefore in ‘Free Education’. This larger segment in education is paid for by taxpayers, with whose money State schools expanded to the interior. Private schools remained in a few major cities catering to the affluent. Education is being ‘sold’ in all these private schools with no one protesting.

From the mid-80s the new and expensive ‘international schools’ began as ‘private companies’ and outside the national education system. Yet neither the GMOA nor other anti-SAITM protesters ever opposed these schools where “education is being sold” for good money. Almost the entirety of tertiary education has come under private business. Everything for a heavy price.

In education, within the privately-funded segment are students studying for medical degrees at foreign universities registered with the SLMC. The selection and approval process of registering these foreign medical schools by the SLMC is not transparent and open for public scrutiny. The GMOA and all anti-SAITM protesters do not question that “private” education. They in fact accept those foreign degrees validated under Act 16 and don’t even protest over government appointments given to them.

They also do not protest over the Kotalawaela Defence Academy (KDA) offering medical degrees for big money. No protest over the SLMC approving the KDA medical degree and providing government teaching hospital facilities to KDA students.XXX

The utterly ruthless selfishness of the GMOA leadership goes beyond these issues that they keep totally mum about. It goes as far as squeezing out taxpayers who fund ‘Free Education’ through private practise and ‘channel medical services’, where fees are arbitrarily decided. They demand totally ‘Free Education’ but wouldn’t give up on their right to charge the very people who fund their education. 

I would therefore challenge the GMOA and others to take a principle stand against (i) all local and foreign degrees including the KDA medical degree privately paid for by Sri Lankan students (ii) the SLMC registering foreign medical schools (iii) private practise in the health sector, including channel services, to come clean on everything that deforms what they call ‘Free Education’.