Sri Lanka bans strikes by healthcare workers amid hospital crisis | Health News
The ban comes as trade union action demanding far better pay and disorders in the health care sector enters a sixth day.
Sri Lanka’s president has banned strikes in the overall health and electricity sectors as trade union motion that has crippled state-operate hospitals entered its sixth day.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Saturday invoked a 1979 law prohibiting stoppages in the two sectors, declaring all connected get the job done “essential general public services”, his workplace claimed.
The rough laws make it possible for courts to hand down five-yr jail terms and confiscate the assets of those refusing operate.
The go followed wellness unions ignoring a courtroom buy on Thursday instructing them to suspend their strike pending a hearing of a petition towards their motion.
Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez, reporting from Colombo, explained unions have not termed off the strike regardless of the ban.
“The health treatment unions told me a small when back that they are nonetheless in consultation with their attorneys to test and determine out what the implications are of this most current act brought by the president,” Fernandez reported.
“Professionals like medical doctors can come across their names struck off registers. There are a great deal of demanding punitive steps for these convicted beneath the Critical Products and services Act. Unions have not still referred to as off their trade union steps,” she additional.
Sri Lanka is in the grip of a overseas trade crisis that has crippled the economic climate, and the unions are demanding much better promotional prospects, restructuring of their pay out scales and better allowances.
The govt has refused, stating the present-day financial circumstance does not make it possible for it to boost the salaries budget.
Thousands of health workers have been having aspect in the strike motion, leaving only crisis products and services performing at point out hospitals and quite a few regime expert services put off.
Electrical power sector personnel are not on strike, but they too have threatened trade union motion if the authorities goes forward with designs to market a thermal energy plant to a US enterprise.
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