New Year greetings from GMOA

Governments careless attitude over their demands seems to be provoking

trade union action by GMOA
2015-12-25

NO TREATMENT will be the New Year greetings of

medical doctors to their poor patients, as per the announcement by the
Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) last week. They will take
stern trade union action if the government continues its silence over the
demands of the medical practitioners, as per the GMOA claim.
What are these demands? Better medical standards for their patients?
Provide sufficient medicine to the dying patients at Maharagama and
Karapitiya Cancer hospitals? Provide better medicine for the critical patients
by removing sub-standard medicine from the stores? Take strict action
against the private hospital mafia? Introduce better standards to the
mushrooming private hospitals? Investigate the alleged illicit human organ
trading rackets that some private hospitals are engaged in? Divulge and
take tough action by the Bribery Commission against the corrupt practices
of the doctors in order to safeguard the good name of the profession?
Sorry nothing of that sort. Pension issues, withdrawal of the vehicle
permit, SAITM Private Medical College and CEPA agreement between Sri
Lanka and India.

On the outset, there exists a major political rift between the GMOA and the
government over the conduct of the former during the January 8

Presidential Election. Many are of the view that the GMOA became a
political tool of the Rajapakse regime due to the conduct of some of its key
leaders. If this is the case, GMOA should clear its name and fame before
getting on to the streets for struggles, otherwise it cannot avoid the political
branding that the professional entity would receive from different quarters
of society. In fact some medical officers feel that the association is divided
based on individuals who became political activists rather than
professionals. Professional bodies should not get politically tarnished at
whatever cost, and should get stringent measures to get rid of such
politically aligned characters. Otherwise the struggles will continue and the
poor patients will suffer. Withdrawal of an existing privilege would
certainly create problems. I fully, thus, understand the lamenting of the
doctors. Vehicle permits issue not only confines to the medical doctors, but
it affects all state sector executives as well. But my argument is that it
should not be limited to the state sector executives what about the tax
paying corporate sector that virtually runs the economy of the country?
They too deserve similar privileges. In that case what about the teachers?
Both general medical practitioners and professions like teachers would go
through more or less a similar academic process basic degree and a
process of professional training. Special professions like medicine are
predominantly based on the personal choice made at the entry level of
Advanced Level.
No argument, professions like medicine become more sacred due to its
compassion towards humanity specifically on saving lives. So do
occupations like teaching which are more onto building lives. It is difficult to
judge as to how one could over run the other. Former Indian President Abdul
Kalam categorized primary teacher as the most important profession as it
involves in shaping and building the future of the kid. If that is the case
professional bodies like GMOA should fight for social justice for the
betterment of such persons.
However, the government too made a mess of the issue by re-granting the
facility for Parliamentarians which should not have been done.

The Medical Faculty of the South Asian Institute for Technology and
Medicine (SAITM) or the Private Medical College (PMC) in Malabe is
another mess. It seems the GMOA is not opposing the concept of PMCs but
the poor standards of the SAITM Medical Faculty. The Sri Lanka Medical
Council (SLMC) at several occasions has raised its concern over several

issues at Malabe PMC, predominantly on its clinical practices. Community

medicine and forensic medicine have also been issues. Granting clinical
practices at state hospitals (at Avissawella and Kaduwela hospitals as
conveyed to the courts) is also morally wrong when there are ample private
hospitals in the country. Some alleged that even the in-take of students is
not up to that standards. It seems there are students who have not
qualified in bio science at their Advanced Levels but home science, a
GMOA member told this writer. If these allegations are true, the institution
requires a thorough scrutiny to rectify the situation. The government should
be serious about getting the situation corrected.
The attitude towards the Kotalawala Defence University (KDU) that also
runs as a semi government institution is entirely different. Our standards
are not the best, but comparatively OK. There are issues as well, but
strangely enough the GMOA is silent about it, said a senior lecturer of
medical faculty of KDU.
But the disaster situation is not at PMC or KDU, but at Rajarata and
Eastern University Medical Faculties. They do not even have proper
dedicated teaching staff, either the lecturers are too old retired professors
from Colombo or elsewhere on part time basis or those who are on
sabbatical leave from other universities. So the output is hopeless, and I
cannot claim that they are professional doctors, according to a senior
Professor of the Colombo Medical Faculty.
Another Professor said that the Rajarata and Eastern Medical Faculties
consist of just passed out MBBS students from Colombo or
Jayawardenapura who have no teaching or clinical experience. Strangely
the SLMC provides the excellence recognition to these graduates and GMOA
turn a blind eye on these state institutions. In fact all the state run seven
medical faculties have major issues. Colombo has more than 30 crucial
vacancies. Nobody talks about them, but a big issue is on PMC, he said.
If this is the situation of the state medical faculties, the demand of the
GMOA to make PMC the eighth medical faculty of the state does not make
sense. I think the GMOA should revisit its demand list and get its acts
together, get the house in order before making a mess out of the situation.
I have no idea as to why GMOA is making a demand on the controversial
CEPA agreement. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe made a clear
statement in Parliament vehemently rejecting any move by the government
to bring CEPA into force. But the doctors who state that the agreement will
continue, feel threatened that their private practice will be affected by
visiting Indian doctors under the agreement. Nonetheless, there are dozens
of Indian doctors practising in private hospitals in Sri Lanka for the past

many years even without CEPA. Why is this sudden fear?

No profession has supremacy over the others. And no profession could
claim that they are a supreme output of free education. What is the
objective of free education? To produce doctors, engineers and such
professionals at the expense of poor tax payers of this country? Sorry, sadly
mistaken. The expectation of free education is to produce learned citizenry
and good human beingsand if one claims to have gained the highest
benefits of free education, he or she should be mindful of humanity, fair
play and compassion. It is not, at all, about gaining the highest marks at
examinations by parrot-like cramming.
Posted by Thavam