Virus, complacency and idiocy

Wednesday 11th August, 2021

New Zealand is having ‘labour pains’. Midwives are on the warpath there. They struck work, the other day, demanding better pay, and some of them even took to the streets. Their trade union struggle is not likely to end until their demands are met, according to media reports. They have rejected out of hand a revised pay offer, claiming that it is not adequate.

No country should be complacent when coronavirus makes a retreat, for the elusive enemy is capable of making a comeback at will. New Zealand is apparently resting on its laurels, having declared itself Covid-19 free. True, no active cases have been reported there for some time, but the fact remains that all it takes to plunge a country into chaos is a single infection cluster that goes unnoticed. Sri Lanka also declared victory in its war against Covid-19 prematurely, to all intents and purposes, and lowered its guard, only to have a rude awakening.

Mass gatherings are fraught with the danger of facilitating the spread of Covid-19 even in countries that have not detected any infections for months. However, the New Zealand health workers, to their credit, waited until their country overcame the health crisis and the economy bounced back to make their demands. They refrained from resorting to ca’canny, sick-note campaigns, strikes or street protests while the pandemic was spreading, unlike their counterparts elsewhere. Nurses have also conducted protests, in New Zealand, demanding pay hikes. All these protesting health workers toiled under trying conditions to beat the virus. They know their country can afford what they ask for because of its early economic recovery.

While the health workers in the Land of the Long White Cloud are trying to win their demands, having achieved the goal of containing the pandemic, we have seen in this land like no other, during the past several months, various trade unions and student groups performing the hongi with coronavirus in the streets while the pandemic is raging. We are already witnessing thick plumes of smoke billowing from many crematoria kept open round the clock to dispose of the remains of pandemic victims. Mass burials cannot be far off—absit omen!
Having suspended their street protest campaign, except in the North, teachers’ unions are threatening further trade union action and enlisting the support of other workers. The impact of their street demonstrations on public health will be seen in a few days. The pandemic death toll has already reached 118. Health experts fear that it will continue to climb steeply.

The government has appointed a Cabinet sub-committee comprising a former education minister—Dallas Alahapperuma—to study teachers’ problems and propose ways and means of solving them. Not many Sri Lankans take the appointment of such committees seriously; it is widely considered a dilatory tactic, but if the government had cared to get the protesting teachers around the table earlier, perhaps, the super-spreading events like street protests could have been avoided.

SLPP propagandists call the infection clusters caused by teachers’ protests guru pokuru. But the government’s contribution thereto should not go unrecognised. Let these clusters be called guru-aandu pokuru.

Agitations have apparently come to pass for trade unionism in this country. Responsibility is something alien to the present-day trade unions here unlike in other countries such as Japan, whereunionised workers are mindful of their duties and obligations, and keen to enhance their productivity while taking action to improve conditions of employment; never do they allow political parties to use them as a cat’s paw. Similarly, successive governments have acted irresponsibly in handling workers’ problems; they have sought to wear strikers down or crush their trade union struggles.
It is hoped that workers and the government will behave at least until the pandemic is over.