Almost 90 percent of local doctors oppose the irresponsible activities of the GMOA, said Social Empowerment and Welfare Minister S.B. Dissanayake.
Addressing a press conference held at the Wattegama Vocational Training Institute for the Disabled, the minister said that President Maithripala Sirisena had given a proper solution to the SAITM issue. Accordingly, SAITM students will gain clinical training at Homagama and Awissawella hospitals, and will be called upon to sit for a special examination after passing out, he said.
The Neville Fernando Hospital would be taken over by the government and its ownership will be board-based, he added. SAITM agreed to this solution. The minister said the GMOA had opposed this solution too.
The objective of the GMOA was to prevent students passing out from private medical colleges from practising in the country. Sri Lankan students go to universities abroad to study medicine, paying millions of rupees, but some of these foreign universities lack facilities available in our schools, leaving aside SAITM.
The GMOA conducted campaigns against SAITM, fearing that students passing out from it would pose a threat to their private channelling practice, minister Dissanayake said.