RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Doctors Strike vs Public Right to Health Service

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jul 1 1999 (IPS) - A strike by Sri Lankan government doctors that has shut-down all but emergency services in hospitals since mid-June has triggered a rights debate — the labour rights of medical professionals and the people’s right to health services.

Across this island people are angry with the striking doctors, whose demands also affect the process of devolution of power to the provinces that the government has been pushing for as a political solution to the bloody ethnic conflict.

The doctors want health administration to be under Colombo though health and education were among subjects that were handed over to the provinces under the Provincial Councils Act mooted by the previous government in 1987.

To strengthen this provincial autonomy, the ruling People’s Alliance government, in power since 1994, put together a package of constitutional reforms which awaits parliamentary sanction.

Last week, a Colombo judge ordered the arrest of senior officials of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA), which represents up to 5,000 striking doctors, following a public interest petition filed by a group of lawyers.

The lawyers argued that since health was declared an essential service by the government and the strike banned, the public has a right to medical services.

“Trade unions don’t have the freedom of the wild ass. The public has a right to services,” observes Mahinda Samarasinghe, an opposition UNP parliamentarian who once served as a provincial health minister.

He said that since doctors were resentful of the ambiguities of the 1987 law, the government should prepare statutes for different subjects that clearly demarcate the responsibilities of the provincial councils and the central government.

On June 29, UNP leader Ranil Wickremasinghe called for an urgent session of parliament to debate the strike that authorities say has crippled services and led to the deaths of at least four persons.

“The islandwide strike by doctors has dragged on (since June 14) without a settlement causing great hardship and inconvenience to the people and more particularly to the suffering patients,” he said in a letter to Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

Colombo says it is prepared to hold discussions with the GMOA, but it is in a bind because in March this year the government had approved a national health policy, at the request of the GMOA, that retains the right of appointment, promotion and transfer of medical personnel with the government.

The policy was under implementation when a provincial council challenged its right to appoint doctors and medical staff in the province in court, and got a stay order on further appointments.

Sri Lankan rights groups agree that the strike has raised some critical issues pertaining to trade union rights versus public rights.

“This has raised some interesting issues vis-a-vis the rights of trade unions and the public,” says Dr Pakiasothy Saravamuttu, executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), which is supportive of public interest litigation.

He said ordinary citizens were increasingly exercising fundamental rights issues through petitions in courts. Earlier this year, two members of the Centre in their private capacity challenged the postponement of provincial council elections saying their right to exercise their vote had been violated.

The Supreme Court agreed with their view and ordered the Elections Commissioner to hold the polls, put off by the government last year on security grounds.

Cases for public interest litigation are many. Last year, thousands of employees of the Postal Department went on strike in a dispute over wages, overtime and other issues resulting in millions of letters and cheques not being delivered.

Among those affected were thousands of families of Sri Lankans working in the Middle East who rely on the post for monthly foreign drafts.

The government broke the strike by declaring the service as essential and arresting union leaders. Now postal unions are threatening to stop work again over plans by the government to make the department a sort of corporation which unions fear would result in staff cuts and loss of other benefits.

Earlier this year, a bank strike called by several unions ran for several weeks. One newspaper reported that a retired

government worker collapsed and died of a heart attack after waiting for hours in a slow-moving bank queue to collect his monthly pension.

On Tuesday, a group of 24 unions threatened to join the doctors strike if President Chandrika Kumaratunga did not respond to a request by the GMOA to discuss the crisis.

Ananda Sangaree, a senior spokesman for the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), said most Tamil and Muslim minority parties feared that if the government yielded to the demands of doctors, that would lead to further centralisation of subjects like health, education and social services.

“Devolution of power is merely on paper and proper devolution has not taken place so far. We have been fighting for this for a long time but provincial councils still have a long way to go before they are given their full authority,” he said.