Strikes in the health sector

The GMOA, has again threatened to flex muscles unless their demands are met by the government before next Monday. They demand inter alia that the health services be re-centralised and a certain advisor to the President be prevented from interfering with their work.

The service that doctors render to the country is invaluable. When their genuine grievances are not promptly redressed by the powers that be it is natural for them to get so agitated. Having devoted so many years of their life to studies and undergone hardships to become doctors, they cannot be faulted in a way for seeking preferential treatment as evident from their demand that the medical administrative authority of all medical officers be vested with the cabinet of ministers.

A prerequisite for efficiency of the health services is an efficient administrative mechanism. It has now been established that decentralisation as practiced in Sri Lanka has not yielded benefits to either government servants or the people. It is said to have led only to duplication of work and an attendant waste of funds.

Weaknesses of decentralisation apart, the medical profession should be given its due place and their reasonable demands met without compelling them to resort to trade union action. For a doctors' strike only causes the poor to suffer in government hospitals.

Doctors on the other hand should have the public interest at heart and be considerate towards the people especially the less privileged sections of society who seek treatment at government health institutions. A doctors' strike hardly affects the rich or the politicians who have alternative means of receiving medical care.

Doctors of course have the potential to twist health minister's arm through a strike. The government usually gives in after a protracted tussle and doctors emerge triumphant. This we have witnessed in the past. But at what cost?

Unfortunately, from the doctors' point of view a strike is the only way they can win their demands. Negotiations with the government it is said, are in vain and their grievances go unheeded unless a strike is resorted to or a threat is issued to that effect.

Similarly, the doctors should be wary of winning their demands at the expense of the public interest. Taking the number of disputes between the government and the doctors and suffering they have caused to the people, one might be right in asking if the good doctors are emulating the private bus operators in trying to have their demands met.

In any sector be it health or any other, it is not possible to guarantee hundred per cent satisfaction of a particular category of workers. Doctors are not alone in their predicament. There are tens of thousands of teachers, clerks and many others, who have been suffering in silence for years. Their plight is perhaps severer than doctors as their difficulties are mainly economic. Doctors at least have a decent income to live on.

Many engineers, who are on par with doctors professionally are either underpaid or underemployed. Their administration too has been decentralised causing them numerous problems.

Therefore, although it is nothing but fair for the doctors to seek quick remedies to their problems, they should come to terms with reality in adopting ways and means of having grievances redressed. For, in the end those who suffer are the people who have incidentally paid for their education and are paying their salaries.

The political swashbucklers who have made a dog's breakfast of the health sector by antagonising all categories of workers will not get anywhere by remaining intransigent in dealing with doctors, who certainly deserve a better deal. When the GMOA wants the medical administration to be centralised, they are not asking for the sun and the moon. It was once under the government and the country has not benefited much from its decentralisation. It is therefore something that the government can do without much difficulty. Their demand that interference by a presidential advisor with their work be stopped too can be met with ease.

These are seemingly resolvable matters over which there should not be strikes in the health sector.