The new human shields
The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) strike action on Friday based on a host of trade union demands is best described by the pithy local saying; “viddey pandurata wadune haawata” - the arrow was aimed at the bush but it hit the rabbit (in the bush). The Government cared two hoots for their strike while scores of patients – the poorest of the poor, whom the GMOA is under oath to serve, were made to suffer.
Among the GMOA’s many demands is to abrogate the Free Trade Agreement with Singapore. The GMOA is not taking the word from the Government that no doctors, in fact no professionals, will be permitted to come to work here under the Agreement. The union concedes that its demands are not confined to its calling, but are a wider protest on behalf of other professionals (when other professionals are not complaining). The GMOA even goes to the extent of calling for a National Trade Policy, which is strictly none of its business. It wants to play the role of “Watchdog of the Nation”. This has attracted justifiable criticism from the Government that the GMOA is a trade union of the ‘Joint Opposition’. That its strike came a day after the JO’s Janabala Sena protest seemed a questionable coincidence.
The GMOA’s use of hapless patients is no different to when the LTTE used civilians as human shields. About this time last year also, the GMOA threatened to strike right in the middle of a dengue epidemic, over medical degrees being awarded by a private institution. We said then, that the GMOA was running the risk of earning the public wrath and the day may well come when the people will, in fact, ask for foreign doctors to come to this country to heal the sick.
It is not that the GMOA doesn’t have genuine grievances. Which professional body doesn’t? Those who work in the public sector, from Railway personnel to Immigration officers to private bus operators, engine drivers and university staff – the list is endless, all have grievances. The GMOA is not the only trade union to hold the public to ransom with strikes. The difference being that while strikes by other sectors are an inconvenience to the public, a GMOA strike can mean the loss of lives even though it meekly argues that essential services were maintained.
In our letters page this week an irate engineer makes a valid point, noting the unsung contribution made by professionals in the engineering field: among whom are those who ensure the citizenry, industries and services with an uninterrupted supply of power. Serving in inhospitable conditions in power stations around the country (not sitting in a/c rooms like doctors) they have no private practice, she says. Furthermore, it is the engineers who have made modern medical care more patient-friendly with their inventions and instruments that doctors did not have earlier.
The engineer’s letter (Plus section page 2) is well worth a read, especially by doctors and other professionals in the public sector even though Electricity Board (CEB) unions have not been without threatening strikes from time to time to win their demands. Basically, the engineer asks why doctors must be treated as ‘holy cows’. That the GMOA has lent itself to accusations that it is a puppet trade union of the ‘Joint Opposition’ is to its own detriment. The day it loses the respect of the public it will lose everything it has. When the GMOA opposes private degrees, and FTAs and the Government is taking the dismissive approach saying it is a mere political cat’s paw, it serves no one, not least the poorest of the poor of this country.
The Health Ministry is on a trip felicitating the Minister on some WHO appointment that is given on some rotation regional basis to the country, not the individual. The Ministry is not thinking of outof-the box solutions to genuine grievances of the GMOA. The Sri Lanka Medical Council boss has quit complaining of the failure to change archaic laws, while the Ministry complains that the media are not giving it sufficient publicity for the good it does in reducing the prices of some pharmaceutical drugs and providing stents, optical lenses and lifetime care for cancer patients.
As for the Government as a whole, it is difficult to get the public to buy its lament that the General Treasury has no money to meet the demands of these public sector unions, when it sets the worst possible example of leadership -- as shown by discussing pay increase for the Members of Parliament and allowing MPs duty free vehicles which they sell and pocket millions overnight. It is a wonder that the general public does not get onto the streets as well.