Petition against Rajitha set on fire

A tense situation erupted yesterday at the Nagoda General Hospital between a group of Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) officers and a mob which expressed their protest when the officers of the GMOA tried to get the signatures from the people against Health Minister Rajitha Senarathne saying that it was a no-faith motion against the Health Minister.

In the morning the GMOA officers made an attempt to get the signatures from the Nagoda hospital staff and the people including the patients as a protest against Minister Senarathne.

When a group of GMOA officers including its secretary Dr. Haritha Aluthge and Dr. Navin Soysa created an awareness among the people to get the signatures for the document , a group of people that broke into the hospital premises said that trade union action could not be implemented there because it was a disturbance to patients. Then a brawl erupted between these two groups.

There was a large number of people who had come to the hospital for medical treatment at that time. The people who broke into the hospital premises had taken the document from the officers and set fire to it.

In the meantime, the police arrived at the scene and made an attempt to settle the dispute. On that occasion, a group of doctors including the Chairman of the Government Medical Officers Forum Dr.rukshan Bellana turned up at the hospital premises to protest against the GMOA. Accordingly, three parties got involved in this conflict and as a result, for several hours work at the hospital was disrupted.

However, the officers of the GMOA were sent out of the back door of the hospital with the intervention of the police.