Ceylon Today Editorial

Better Late Than Never

16 May 2017

Sri Lanka is ever so famous for doing things several years after it would have been most appropriate. The current Government of Sri Lanka, as its many predecessors, has shown disinterest in making no change at all in the country. Whatever it does, it's always late or a move that is incredibly useless.

Same goes for the way things are handled regarding the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM).

It is common knowledge that issues regarding the SAITM could have been resolved since its inception back in 2008. And it has taken almost nine years and two governing-systems to provide an almost proper solution. In light of the continuous protests against the SAITM, the government recently requested the private medical school's management to halt enrolling new students to the institution. The request was made by Higher Education and Highways Minister, Lakshman Kiriella, through the respective Ministry, requesting the SAITM management to halt student intake till several policy decisions taken by the government on SAITM are implemented.

These policy decisions include the listing of SAITM in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) and the appointing of a monitoring body to overview SAITM, in order to ensure standards and quality of medical education. Most importantly, one policy includes nationalizing the Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital along with the increasing the number of scholarships offered by the private medical college.

The government has claimed that it will take around two months to implement these policy changes which call for the SAITM management to halt enrolling new students for that time period.

The SAITM management has not responded to the request, despite the government's expectations of a positive response. The request to halt enrolling students to SAITM till issues are resolved was welcomed by the SAITM Medical Faculty Parents' Forum (SMFPF), somewhat of a bit of a victory to the Forum, due to its ongoing crusade against the private medical university. Of course, not much could be said about the protests made by the Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) which continues to stand against everything about SAITM, calling for the complete closing down of the school and ceasing the awarding of degrees.

The Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC), of course, seems to be tied up in its own problems associated with the SAITM – the grenade threat that took place last Saturday. The matter remains unresolved as of yet, with the investigative authorities baffled with the bomb that appeared in front of the SLMC office suddenly. The hand grenade, which did not fortunately explode, was safely removed from the location by the Police and resulted in the SLMC heading for exclusive special meetings this week. One cannot – all the while we are critiquing the events open-mindedly – help but connect the fake shooting incident involving the SAITM CEO.

Well, it's too early to jump to any conclusions, so we shall wait and see.

Distractions of all kinds – grenade threats, protests and whatnot – aside, everyone knows that the issues pertaining to the SAITM versus the Government of Sri Lanka matter could have been resolved a long time ago.

If the previous governments took steps to resolve the SAITM matter by adopting the necessary policies such as nationalizing the Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital or making it mandatory for SAITM to maintain high academic standards, administrative procedures and proper management practices, and also requiring it to be governed by a Board of Governors, and to be listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange, so as to broad-base its ownership through shares, the matter would have been over a long time ago. Furthermore, if arrangements were made for SAITM medical students who pass their final examination to undergo clinical training at government hospitals while making it mandatory for all students to face an examination conducted under the supervision of the SLMC and the University Grants Commission; everything that made the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine 'bad' in the public eye in recent times, could have been avoided.

But due to the negligence, the ignorance and the myopic personal needs of many senior government officers and those of the government themselves, this was avoided rather intentionally. However, now we have been given a golden opportunity to make amends. And it would be wise for us to not hinder that process.