-By A Special Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -27.May.2025, 11.50 AM) The Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA), Sri Lanka’s most powerful trade union of state doctors, has once again taken centre stage—this time issuing a veiled ultimatum to the government, threatening professional action if a revised circular outlining their additional duty and holiday allowances is not issued within the week.
According to Dr. Chamil Wijesinghe, the GMOA’s media spokesperson, the association’s executive council convened today (26th May) and resolved to demand immediate rectification of a previously issued Health Ministry circular which, they claim, incorrectly outlines the revised values of these allowances. Should this demand be ignored, he warned, the GMOA “will be compelled to resort to trade union action if necessary.”
The current standoff stems from a March 25th directive from the Ministry of Public Administration, which was based on amendments proposed to the budget estimates by the President himself—at the end of a prior GMOA trade battle. The Health Ministry followed up with its own circular on April 28th, stipulating specific figures for doctors’ additional duty allowances. The GMOA now claims that these figures were calculated incorrectly and violate fundamental policy and technical principles.
According to Dr. Wijesinghe, a high-level meeting was held on April 29th with the Secretary to the Health Ministry and other senior officials. During that discussion, he says, all parties agreed that the errors would be corrected and a new circular would be issued. Yet, nearly a month later, nothing has materialised.
But the GMOA’s outrage seems curiously selective.
For a union so quick to flex its muscles over pay and perks, it has remained conspicuously silent on matters that concern the dignity and accountability of the medical profession itself. Just this month, a Southern court made scathing remarks about misconduct within Sri Lanka’s medical establishment—comments that could undermine public trust in healthcare. The GMOA did not utter a single word in defence, nor did it demand any inquiry or clarification.
One is forced to ask: is the GMOA only a guardian of benefits, not of professional ethics? Can it mobilise island-wide strikes over accounting formulas but say nothing when the profession’s integrity is questioned in open court?
The pattern is becoming clear. For all its talk of principles and service, the GMOA’s red lines appear to begin and end with its members’ wallets. The union that claims to fight for health sector stability now threatens to destabilise the system at will, invoking vague “external forces” and conspiracy theories if decisions—even from the President and Parliament—fail to meet its satisfaction.
At a time when the public is grappling with long queues for medicine, a broken hospital infrastructure, and understaffed rural clinics, the GMOA’s posturing looks less like a principled defence of doctors’ rights and more like the entitled tantrums of a monopolistic guild.
Sri Lanka’s doctors deserve fair compensation. But they also owe their patients—and the broader society—a commitment to professional accountability, introspection, and balance. Silence in the face of judicial criticism is not neutrality; it’s complicity.
The real illness afflicting the health sector may not just be budgetary mismanagement—but the unchecked ego of its loudest lobby.
-By A Special Correspondent
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by (2025-05-27 06:17:07)
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