Stop sickening the sick

Tuesday 8th February, 2022

Sri Lanka’s health service is as sick as a dog, and shows no signs of recovery in the foreseeable future. Hardly a day passes without a strike therein, causing untold suffering to the poor, who cannot pay for healthcare. It looks as if doctors, nurses, paramedics and others took turns to cripple the state-run health institutions from time to time.

Eighteen health sector trade unions yesterday launched a strike, which, they say, will go on until their demands are met. Thousands of poor patients who visited government hospitals yesterday were turned away, as a result.

The country is beset with multiple crises, and a strike affecting the state-run hospital network is something the ordinary people need like a hole in the head. Similarly, the government must do its utmost to prevent strikes in the health sector by addressing workers’ problems. It always lets trade union disputes get out of hand before agreeing to talk.

Salary scales in the public sector are interconnected, and a pay hike for one category of workers could lead to complaints of salary anomalies by others. One of the demands of the health sector strikers is the rectification of salary anomalies caused by teachers’ pay hike. Hence the pressing need for politicians and mandarins to tread cautiously in trying to sort out state sector salary issues. The government should have acted prudently in handling the education sector salary anomalies instead of adopting ad hoc remedies, and creating a bigger mess.

President of the Government Medical Officers’ Forum Dr. Rukshan Bellana has lashed out at the striking trade unions. He has struck a responsive chord with the irate public. His outfit is opposed to trade union action that aggravates the suffering of the sick. Dr. Bellana’s contention is that the ongoing strike is politically-motivated.

There is hardly any public sector trade union which is devoid of party politics; all of them, save a handful, are affiliated to political parties. The two main nurses’ unions have, as their heads, a layman, who received a National List seat from the UNP in the last Parliament for services rendered, and a Buddhist monk, who has been appointed the Chancellor of a national university because he, together with others, helped the SLPP capture power. The former MP and the Chancellor are at each other’s jugular purportedly to safeguard the rights of nurses.

However, the fact remains that workers represented by the trade unions with political agendas have legitimate grievances, which should be redressed; the salary issues that nurses and other health workers are bitterly complaining about are real.

The government may have expected the public sector trade unions to behave when it unveiled a huge relief package, which granted an across-the-board allowance to state employees and pensioners. These relief measures will cost the taxpayer as much as Rs. 229 billion, and when more money is printed to fund them, inflation will increase further. But the government’s plan has not worked; health workers are already on the warpath, demanding more, and others are likely to follow suit.

The ongoing game of chicken between the Health Ministry and the striking unions must end. More and more people are becoming dependent on the state health service owing to job losses and sharp drops in household incomes caused by the pandemic and endless blunders the current dispensation is making on the economic front. The government must get the strikers around the table without further delay and initiate a dialogue. The parties to the dispute at issue must act responsibly instead of trying to wear down each other. They must realise that the interests of the public, who pay through the nose to maintain them, must take precedence over theirs.