Supreme Court to hear petitions against health sector strike on 31 Oct.

By S.S. Selvanayagam

The Supreme Court will hear three fundamental rights petitions filed against public health sector strikes on 31 October.

The bench comprising Justices B.P. Aluvihara, Anil Gooneratne and Vijith K. Malalgoda deferred the applications for 31 October pursuant to an application made on behalf of Manohara de Silva PC on the basis that there was insufficient time for him to obtain detailed instructions from his clients.

The Petitioners cited the Prime Minister, Members of the Cabinet of Ministers, Secretary to the Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, Director General of Health Services, Commissioner General of Labour, Government Medical  Officers’ Association (GMOA), Government Nursing Officers Association, All Ceylon Medical Officer’s Association, Sri Lanka Federal Health Services Union, All Ceylon Nurses Union, Alliance of Health Workers Unions, the Society of Registered and Assistant Medical Officers, Attorney General and others as respondents.

Sanjeeva Jayawardena PC, with Charitha Rupasinghe and Asoka Niwunhella, appeared for the petitioners M.S.A. Muthumala, Sampath Abeydeera Gunaratne and Dharshana Ranathunga.

Senany Dayaratne, with Duleeka Imbuldeniya, Nisala Seniya Fernando and Thilina Wariyapperuma, appeared for the petitioner M.W. Kamal Gnanaratne. Manohara De Silva PC appeared for the GMOA, Senior Deputy Solicitor General Viveka Siriwardena with Senior State Counsel Fazly Razik appeared for the State.

The petitioners emphasise that they are not seeking to unduly fetter the legal right of workers to withhold their labour when faced with exploitation, discrimination or intolerable or dangerous working conditions but seek to achieve, through the intervention of the Supreme Court, the due mobilisation of effective mechanisms that recognise and implement the best interests of the country and its people.

The petitioner respectfully states that the right of the people to effective and uninterrupted healthcare services and facilities must be the paramount and pervasive interest of all stakeholders in the state healthcare system.

The petitioner states that effective healthcare is essential for realising the directive principles of state policy enumerated in the Constitution and has a direct bearing on the right to life and the quality of life of citizens.

They say that the State must at the policy and conceptual levels ensure that the collective rights and needs of the people are paramount. The petitioner states that for this purpose, the State must put in place effective mechanisms to ensure that the rights, privileges and entitlements of individuals or various groups within society are necessarily subordinate to and must yield to the paramount interests of the collective rights and needs of the people.

They state that due to poverty and the consequent inability to pay for private medical care, deprived and underprivileged citizens are completely dependent on the medical care provided by the State.

They highlighted the growing phenomenon, with exponential increases in frequency in recent times, of the intensity, militancy and aggression of strike action, where hospitals and hospitals services have come to a grinding halt.

To further aggravate matters, the industrial action and form is decided by a small coterie of office bearers who purport to assume the collective voice of the entirety of their respective professions, many of whom do not concur with such militant and destructive and indeed, obstructive action, they say.

The State has watched on with perpetual inertness and apathy, and successive governments have been held to forcible ransom under the proverbial gunpoint of the threat of trade union action and of crippling the due function of hospitals and the public healthcare system by these associations and trade unions.