The Government Medical Officers Association says that the medical transfer process and the entire health service are facing a serious crisis due to the actions of the Director of Medical Services of the Ministry of Health. The media release issued by the Government Medical Officers Association in this regard is as follows.
Media Release
The crisis caused by irregularities in the medical transfer lists and the trade union action.
Currently, nearly 23,000 doctors are employed in Sri Lanka, and more than 98% of those doctors are members of our association. Therefore, the Government Medical Officers Association acts as a regular participant in the medical transfer boards according to the Establishments Code.
However, the entire medical transfer process and the entire health service have faced a serious crisis due to the Director of the Medical Services Unit of the Ministry of Health acting without the consent of the Transfer Boards and illegally.
Although the 2025 Transfer List was supposed to be published in November 2024 as per the provisions of the Establishments Code, it was delayed by 09 months until July 2025.
While preparing the said transfer list, the Public Service Commission, by abusing the appeal process, removed 78 posts from the approved list and illegally opened new vacancies for doctors friendly to itself and gave those posts to them.
Taking steps to discourage doctors working in difficult locations and to close those difficult hospitals.
The post-internship placement vacancy list is being prepared in an irregular and illegal manner, thereby causing the collapse of the entire health system.
Discussions were held with the Minister of Health on 2025.08.01 regarding the above issues, and although the Minister of Health agreed to rectify these issues and irregularities, he has failed to provide a specific solution so far.
A meeting was held with the Chairman of the Public Service Commission today in this regard, and he also strongly criticized the way the Ministry of Health has acted and agreed to take necessary action.
In this regard, a complaint with all the allegations against the relevant director was given to the Chairman of the Public Service Commission and the request to initiate an investigation was accepted.
As per a decision taken by the Government Medical Officers’ Association Central Committee on 05.08.2025, as the first step of the island-wide trade union action scheduled to begin on 11.08.2025, all doctors awaiting post-internship assignments and doctors in difficult workplaces are scheduled to be summoned to the Government Medical Officers’ Association headquarters tomorrow and the future steps to be taken will be discussed there.
The authorities of the Ministry of Health, including the Director of Medical Services of the Ministry of Health, must take responsibility for the health services that are collapsing through this, and we hope that the Minister of Health will take steps to prevent the sick people suffering from the shortage of medicines from being at risk of collapsing the entire health system and causing a shortage of doctors.