Fingers point at sabotage

Health Ministry launches secret probe

By Isuri Kaviratne

The Health Ministry has launched a ‘confidential investigation’ into acts of sabotage allegedly carried out by trade unions in hospitals this week as eye witnesses were reluctant to come forward to provide evidence due to fear of threats, a Health Ministry official said.

The investigators will look into acts of individual trade unionists who sabotaged hospital activities, and they will be interdicted, he said.

The unionists were protesting about plans to introduce fingerprint machines to mark their attendance and in the process had carried out acts of sabotage in hospitals.

“We received petitions from various hospitals reporting cases of sabotage. There was a complaint from one hospital that a unionist had urinated on a sack of rice which has been brought into the kitchen to prepare food for the patients and we heard that tubes of oxygen cylinders were cut and electricity wires and water pipes damaged,” he said.

The electricity wires at the Colombo National Hospital had been damaged and the Health Ministry investigating squad recorded the evidence from health workers last Thursday.

The Health Ministry official refused to reveal the names of the other hospitals as the investigations were confidential and ongoing.

“We think the damage was done on the night before the strike”, he said adding that under no circumstance was the Health Ministry going to scrap the circular.

The Health Ministry had appointed a committee to look into the reasons given by the unionists for opposing the installation of finger printing machines.

“They told us that transport problems and housing problems are preventing them from coming to work on time. So the committee will try to find solutions for them.

We will discuss with the Private Bus Owners’ Association as well as the CTB and all other relevant parties to find solutions,” he said.

“We are planning to change their working schedules so that they could come to work half an hour later and then work that period in the afternoon,” he said.