A mobile medical service is how Health Minister A.H.M. Fowzie will provide employment to the recently passed out 400 qualified doctors.
"I will not be able to recruit any doctors at present as the infrastructure for accommodating them at hospitals is not available. But an alternative is available with the Health Ministry, if the doctors are willing to take up a field job", said Mr. Fowzie.
The minister, irritated over trade unions dictating terms to him, said that he as a health minister was not going to give into unjustified trade union action. "I do not expect any trade union action over this move", he was confident.
Mr. Fowzie said that he has briefed President Chandrika Kumaratunga about sending doctors on a mobile service at last week's meeting of ministers and that she has expressed her satisfaction on this. He said doctors will be made 'family health doctors' - a new cadre in the health sector - who will go from house to house and maintain health records of patients and treat them accordingly.
According to this scheme each doctor will be required to look after nearly 500 families.
The GMOA, who earlier stood by the passed-out medical students, said that a proposal of this nature will have to be seriously studied. "However President Kumaratunga gave us an assurance four months back that all pass-outs will be absorbed into the health ministry", the GMOA president Dr. Ananda Samarasekera said.
Meanwhile, the next year's health theme will be "prevention - the best cure", and the mobile doctors will be an innovative aspect of it.
Hospital technicians threatened to stop emergency services and pharmacists at an emergency meeting on Thursday decided to continue with the work-to-rule action in all government hospitals as Health Minister A.H.M. Fowzie has refused to grant their demands.
Mr. Fowzie based his position on the B.C. Perera report which places five categories of hospital employees, including the pharmacists and 'not life saving', below nurses and midwives who work on a twenty-four-hour, shift basis.
The pharmacists, medical laboratory technicians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and radiography technicians who were earlier on par with nurses, have now been degraded, according to a spokesman for the Society of Government Pharmacists (SGP).
The B.C. Perera report stipulates that these five categories of employees will have to undergo 14 steps in as many years, from class I to special grade, while the nurses can achieve it in only six years.
"This is discrimination, and we are going to teach the Health Ministry and its administrators a lesson. The country will know if we are a life saving category or not, when emergency services provided by us come to a halt", said the SGP spokesman.
In an interview with The Sunday Times soon after she was released by a Colombo court on Thursday she said, she was now in the lurch with no security with no one to turn to and nowhere to go.
In a scenario which was confusing with contradictory statements being made Chitra gave the backdrop to her flight to Denmark, her deportation from there and the subsequent controversy involving Danish journalists.
As she spoke from her lawyers home the place buzzed with international telephone calls from several parties in Denmark including a journalist who had been deported from here.
Excerpts from the interview:Q: For what reason did you go to Denmark in 1993.
A: I went to Denmark at the age of 15. I told Danish police that I had come because the LTTE had been forcing me to take guerrilla training. I also told them that two my brothers were in the LTTE. They contacted my mother's sister Sellammah a resident of Denmark. As I was only 15, police made arrangements with her to accommodate me. That year I joined a Danish school.
Q: Did you apply for refugee status on your arrival?
A: As soon as I arrived there, Danish police got a lawyer to look after my interests. Danish solicitor Christel Falk Woenner was retained for me. She attended to everything regarding my application for refugee status. In 1996, the court that heard my case rejected the application.
Q: How did the authorities in Denmark act then?
A: In the ensuing development a Danish police officer came home and took me into custody. First I was brought to the Nykobing prison and then to the Holstebro prison next day and was left there for that night. On the third day they took me to the Karup airport and sent me to the Copenhagen courts. Then I was kept under custody in the Sandholm prison for a week.
Meanwhile my Danish school principal Kaston Winthar and students along with the human rights activists agitated against my arrest and the attempt to deport me. They openly protested against it and sent an appeal to the Ombudsman calling for a review of my case. As a result my deportation was postponed by a few days.
Q: Did they treat you well?
A: They were humane but they told me they were doing their duty.
Q: How were you deported?
A: Two Danish policemen accompanied me in the plane and handed me over to the Sri Lankan immigration authorities at Colombo airport. They told me "you have now come to your country, contact someone and go". I told them I knew nobody in Colombo. The Danish policemen retorted, "Try over the telephone," and abruptly went away, leaving me.
I was wondering where to go. Fortunately a relative in Denmark had passed on the information about my deportation to some friends in Dehiwala. I called them and they fetched me from the airport. It was around midnight.
I was embarrassed and hurt by the way Danish officials treated me. I did nothing wrong but they broke my heart.
Q: Did the Danish journalist accompany you in the same plane?
A: No.
Q: Did you know the Danish journalist who came here?
A: No.
Q: Then how did you come to know the Danish journalist Jenson Jens Mollar of TVII Denmark?
A: I arrived in Colombo on November 1 and stayed with a family friend at Dehiwala. That day there was a radio news item that a deportee from Denmark was missing and she was being sought by the police. Having heard this news, I got frightened. My friends too were afraid to keep me there any longer.
At this juncture i.e. on November 2 Mr. Mollar came to the house at Dehiwala to have an interview with me.
I told him of my precarious position and he found me accommodation at Mt. Lavinia Hotel.
Q: Where were you arrested?
A: On that fateful day Mollar took me to the SLBC to get more details about the news item regarding me. I was in the car when he went to the SLBC. I presumed that having inquired about the news item Mr. Mollar would have sought assistance from one of the SLBC employees regarding my case. Then four of us including Mr. Mollar proceeded to the house where I stayed earlier at Dehiwala.
At 2 p.m. the Dehiwala police took me into custody when we were about to enter the house. I was detained at the Dehiwala police for five days and interrogated several times by several policemen there. They took my statements at each interrogation. They asked embarrassing questions in a rude manner. After five days detention at the Dehiwala police, I was produced before the Mt. Lavinia court and kept under custody in the Borella Salvation Army Home for 14 days.
Q: What are you hoping to do now?
A: I am not in a proper frame of mind to plan anything. The turn of events have played havoc with me. I feel I'm in danger, because of the widespread publicity my case has drawn.
A security wall around the Peradeniya Botanical gardens: the Ministry of Agriculture, wants it the Kandy Municipal Council says 'No'.
The wall was coming up parallel to the main Kandy road in a move to safeguard the Gardens.
Director of the Botanical gardens, D. D. Sumithrarachchi told 'The Sunday Times' that the Governor and the Pradeshiya Sabha had asked the municipality to stop work on the wall.
The wall is to serve as a barrier against flower plant thefts. There have been instances of icecream vendors and gram sellers breaking into the garden, while beggars and even foreign tourists were in the habit of seeking entry into the gardens illegally.
Some according to the Director, sold liquor and other prohibited items, which they cannot bring through the main gate. The worse offenders were the prostitutes who break into the area, when the gates are closed, for their activities.
It was to save all that trouble, the director said, that permission was obtained from the Minister to put up the wall. The director said he would try to convince the council and obtain permission to carry on with the work.
Following are excerpts of a speech given by Anura Bandaranaike MP, in Parliament, on the condolence vote on Late President J. R. Jayewardena.
Today we have gathered, across the political divide, to pay our final tribute to the first Executive President of Sri Lanka, the late Mr. J.R. Jayewardene. And, we do so in the very Parliament building he so keenly constructed some 15 years ago.
He was, indeed, the quintessential politician. He was a member of the State Council in pre independent Ceylon, the first minister of finance in independent Lanka, minister of agriculture, leader of the house, leader of the opposition, prime minister and finally the executive president. He had qualities of leadership that were unique and he always believed that a leader must lead and never be led. He was the master of parliamentary politics, and, indeed, the master of the game.
Yet, his long and colorful political career was shrouded in controversy and in the controversies that surrounded the end of his long career, it has been easy to forget his many achievements. When he assumed office in 1977, he turned the existing archaic socialist economic structures up side down; refashioned and restructured the economic landscape, freed the economy and ushered in a system that even his bitterest opponents have embraced with a vengeance. He modeled a new constitution and introduced the executive presidency for the first time. Those who swore to dismantle it, are today enjoying all the powers and privileges that J.R. Jayewardene gave that august office. To the everlasting credit of Mr. Jayewardene his political opponents have embraced and grudgingly accepted the multi faceted changes he brought about nearly 20 years ago. And, for the first time in Sri Lankan politics he broke traditional caste barriers to the highest political office paving the way after his political retirement.
I have known J.R. Jayewardene personally for over 20 years. First, when he was the leader of the opposition, then as president and finally, when he was an ordinary citizen. When I was leader of the opposition from 1983 to 1988, Mr. Jayewardene was the president.
We established a close personal rapport which later turned into a warm personal friendship and my political opponents thought that we were plotting and scheming, when we were doing nothing of the sort.
We talked of literature, of history and of the arts. When we met we hardly talked politics, except when I disagreed with him, particularly on the deprivation of my mother's civic rights in 1980. We have argued about this matter on several occasions and though he explained his side of the story, I never agreed with him on that singularly unfortunate decision.
I also argued with him on his decision to hold a referendum in 1983 and I told him what I had to say. He never misunderstood me nor did he hold it against me. He was too large a man for that kind of pettiness or rancor.
Though, he was dignified, and he had a great sense of dignity, he appeared cold and aloof. Yet, he had a warm heart and a wonderful sense of humor. I have always told him that he was the Last of the Mohicans and with a chuckle he agreed. With his death, ends an era in Sri Lankan politics and an era in which he played so important a role.
History might be generous or unkind to J.R. Jayewardene. Whatever be the judgment of history, none can deny that he left an enduring and lasting impression on the post-independent politics of Sri Lanka.
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