Setting sights on SAITM | Daily News

Setting sights on SAITM

The controversy over the granting of recognition to the medical degree awarded by the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) continues to grow and has now emerged as a major socio-political issue that the government has to contend with.

This week, the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) filed an appeal application in the Supreme Court, challenging a decision by the Court of Appeal in late January declaring that SAITM graduates were entitled to be registered with the Council.

Even as they did so, the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), the powerful trade union of medical officers continued its protest campaign, launching token strikes on a region by region basis, inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of patients needing care at state hospitals.

The streets of Colombo have been the scene of protests for and against SAITM almost daily and hundreds of medical students in state run medical faculties are also boycotting lecturers as a mark of protest against SAITM. The Deans of the state medical faculties have already met President Maithripala Sirisena to express their concern regarding this state of affairs.

As the uncertainty over the fate of SAITM graduates grows, there are concerns that this issue may engulf the government and lead to a bigger crisis, similar to the dispute over the North Colombo Medical College in Ragama in the late ‘80s that was a potent catalyst for the insurrection launched by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) at that time.

Maximum political advantage

It is clear that the JVP is not shy to make political capital out of the issue, thirty years later. It may have renounced violence and another insurrection may not be on the cards but it is attempting to take maximum political advantage from the SAITM crisis.

It is no secret that, even though students of state medical faculties may have grievances about SAITM and are participating in protests against it of their own accord, the thousands of other university undergraduates participating in the street protests do so at the behest of the JVP, which still holds sway in campuses particularly in the universities in Peradeniya, Sri Jayewardenepura and Kelaniya.

The JVP is more vocal on the SAITM issue than the main opposition faction in Parliament, the Joint Opposition (JO). That is, in a sense understandable because SAITM was established when Mahinda Rajapaksa was President and to oppose it now, would call into question many decisions that were made during the Rajapaksa dispensation, including the grant of Rs. 600 million to that medical school and the awarding of state scholarships to some students attending SAITM.

In fact, this is exactly what is happening in Parliament. The Parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), headed by JVP parliamentarian Sunil Handunetti is conducting an inquiry into SAITM. COPE has now summoned before it a committee which inquired into SAITM during the previous regime. Ironically this committee was appointed by then Minister of Health and now President, Maithripala Sirisena.

Among those summoned are then Health Ministry Secretary Dr. Ravindra Ruberu, the former Deputy Director General of Education, Health Ministry Training and Research Dr. H.R.U. Indrasiri, the Director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, Prof. Jayantha Jayawardena, former Director of the World Health Organisation, Dr Palitha Abeykoon and Health Ministry Legal Officer A. R. Ahamed.

‘Unqualified’ doctors

It has been reported that this committee concluded that SAITM had distorted information to obtain Board of Investment (BOI) approval. This is what COPE intends to review. The report of this committee was handed over to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2012.

The SAITM issue was also raised in regular proceedings in Parliament this week and best illustrates the confusion that is confounding the issue. As expected both the JO and the JVP accused the government of mollycoddling SAITM. The usual rhetoric about placing patients’ lives at risk by producing so-called ‘unqualified’ doctors was raised, but it was the response of the government that raised more eyebrows.

Some government ministers spoke, defending the steps that have been taken with regard to SAITM but others expressed a dissenting view. Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella, under whose purview SAITM comes under, is firmly of the belief that the government must abide by court rulings, whatever they maybe. At present, that would allow the granting of recognition to the SAITM degree.

Former Higher Education Minister, S. B. Dissanayake, in his characteristic style, was even more vocal. He went so far as to outline shortcomings in state medical faculties in the Rajarata University, Eastern University and Jaffna University and suggested that SAITM was better resourced than these state medical faculties.

Private medical education

Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne, under whose purview the SLMC headed by Carlo Fonseka comes under, is also firmly of the view that SAITM needs to be encouraged and its graduates granted recognition-and not abandoned in the wake of mounting protests.

However there were other government ministers who held very different views, although their portfolios did not bring them in direct control over SAITM or its related issues. Among those who expressed their dissatisfaction with SAITM were ministers Susil Premajayantha, Dayasiri Jayasekara and Champika Ranawaka.

In fact, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) which Minister Ranawaka represents this week went one step further and proposed that SAITM be affiliated to the University of Moratuwa, just as the NCMC was affiliated to the University of Kelaniya.

If the divisions in the government ranks highlight the conundrum that SAITM represents, the most sensible response to the issue has come from the stance taken by the deans of state medical faculties. In this response, which has been submitted to President Sirisena, the deans propose that the government must first take a policy decision as to whether it endorses private medical education or not.

If it does, the deans have proposed that the government must then ensure that standards are maintained in private medical education. To do so, it must inquire into the loopholes which exist in the current legal framework which allowed the SAITM issue to reach such damaging proportions- and then remedy them.

If the government decides that it does not endorse private medical education, it must then proceed to offer a fair pathway to SAITM students to graduate, after fulfilling the requirements of the SLMC and this must be actively facilitated, the deans have suggested.

In the differing views that have emerged over the past few months, it has been difficult to separate the rational from the rhetoric as most stake holders in the debate, be they the government, the opposition, the GMOA, the SLMC or SAITM itself, appear to have their own interests to safeguard.

Amidst this loud cacophony of protests, arguments and counter arguments, the solution that has been proposed by the deans of the state medical faculties appears to be the most sensible and reasonable.

Arguably, it is devoid of political bias and is solely focused on the welfare of undergraduate students, be they in state medical faculties or in SAITM. Unfortunately this response from the deans has got little play in the media so far.

It is of course relevant to note that no matter what the main stakeholders- the government, the GMOA and SAITM- decide, they would eventually all be subject to the ruling of the Supreme Court, where the matter is now being canvassed by the SLMC.

As such, while the government can decide on policy regarding future private medical schools, the fate of SAITM graduates will necessarily rest with neither the JO, the JVP nor the GMOA but the highest court in the country.

Unfortunately for the hundreds of students enrolled in SAITM, they have had a fiery baptism in their bid to enter the medical profession. However, the hottest of fires produces the finest steel and they may still have a chance to prove their worth, just as graduates of the NCMC have done, proving their critics wrong. 

 


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