Cold logic, hard facts

Amid the gloom of the country situation we are living in today, there was a beam of light emitted by a statement issued by the Association of Medical Specialists (AMS) published last week. The use of the word “Association” rather than the more familiar “Union” in the name or title of an organization blunts the abrasive edge associated with the latter term. This, of course, is not always the case. The GMOA, for example, is also an association – the Government Medical Officers Association to give its full title. But in the public mind it is, in fact, a union and one that has in too many instances in the past and present acted no differently from blue collar unions in holding the general public to ransom to obtain its demands. Not so (or should we say so much so) the AMS, although it too has in its history acted in a manner similar to the GMOA, whose members are not all medical specialists, to win various facilities and concessions for its members who too are government employees.

The statement we referred to at the beginning of this comment relates to the AMS’s warning to the government that ad hoc salary increases recently promised to nurses and paramedical services would literally open a can of worms triggering similar demands from across the entire public services spectrum. It is public knowledge that salary anomalies are ubiquitous in the various segments of the monolithic public sector. Its size, Mr. KHJ Wijeyadasa, a former Secretary to the President, says in an article published in this issue of our newspaper totals a massive one and a half million employees. To borrow his words, “Sri Lanka’s tottering economy has to sustain a massive government service of over 1.5 million employees, half a million (government) pensioners and two million Samurdhi beneficiaries.”

He has said that this means that 20 percent of the country’s population is paid by the State. Given that the average family size in this country is four, it can be calculated that as many as eight million people – about a third of our population – subsist on State funding, Wijeyadasa says. Given today’s cost of living, we would add that the former senior public servant chose the right word in using “subsist” rather than “live.” There is no escaping the reality of his conclusion that two issues, affordability and sustainability, are very much a part of the existing situation and the picture is no less than “suicidal.” What we, and we believe most sensible people understand is that a spate of pay increases across the government sector at this point of time will be totally unmanageable however much money we print. That is why we find the AMS statement refreshing. They, like Oliver Twist, are not asking for more for themselves but warning of an approaching whirlwind.

Evening television news bulletins over that past week and more projected the misery caused to poor people by the crippling of government hospital services due to various strikes. The AMS said in its statement that they, as public servants, have been least affected by the pandemic and its resultant economic impact. “Our salaries were paid in full, whether we worked from home or did not work. Even transport was arranged at the expense of the State for some. Even essentials were made available for us, delivered to workplace as an extra convenience. These are some of the privileges we have enjoyed as public servants during this period,” the statement said. “In contrast to us, the private sector employees were not so lucky. There were pay cuts, redundancies were declared and bonuses were trimmed, all cost cutting maneuvers.”

Saying all this in a public statement is refreshing candor seldom encountered in this so-called Democratic Socialist Republic of ours. The medical specialists also drew attention to the plight of those they called “freelance” workers, small businesses and most of all, the daily paid workers saying, “Therefore, we strongly believe that being the least affected segment of the society, we public servants should be more mindful of our duty over rights,” the statement said. “Having analyzed the current situation, and the cascade of events crippling the entire nation, we feel that an urgent interim solution should be sought to prevent a lot more trade unions joining the bandwagon.”

Medical specialists in this country are no doubt a very high earning segment of society. Their fees are high adding substantially to astronomically high cost of private health care. They are also beneficiaries of tax breaks on professional incomes. Many of them drive high-end cars with fleets of BMWs, Mercedes Benzes and expensive SUVs, mostly purchased on duty free permits, seen parked at private hospitals as they engage in their consultation practice in the evenings. The lesser fry, particularly in the health care sector can well throw these facts at their faces saying it is easy for those living in luxury and suffering no hardship whatever to say what the AMS has said. But their own unions must seize opportunities that arise to seize benefits for their members as they have done. That, however, does not detract from the logic of the facts as stated by the AMS. The situation is careening out of control and there is no love lost between the people and the political class that must take the hard decisions. Basil Rajapaksa’s entry into the scene is not going to result in the kind of magic that his supporters say is on the way.