SAITM! Is it a growing concern?

(To whom it may concern!)

The private university concept was mooted in the late 1970s with the liberalised economy. It also takes us to the painful memories of the late 80s of the traumatic period when hundreds of young men were brutally killed. This saga of selling medical education continued with eight attempts to form Private Medical Colleges (PMCs) over the last three decades. The lust for super profits by some unscrupulous local businessmen in exploiting medical education has led to recent controversies and malpractices, which surfaced through reports and news headlines pertaining to SAITM (South Asian Institute of Technology and Management) racket. 

This 'issue' of Private Medical Colleges in Sri Lanka is no longer economical or medical but sociological and political. Indeed, more deep rooted. An important determinant of social determinants of health of Sri Lankans, over the next few decades. I will try to make it succinct to not to waste time.

I was quite taken aback by online comments, reviews and articles written against public universities and in favour of the PMC. I was wondering why is there so much hatred against free healthcare system, free education and doctors in Sri Lanka. Then I started reading some research papers and apparently this is a common problem in every 'highly sought after' field with limited opportunities, specially when it's given on a merit basis! However, these online comments were completely contradicting the experiences of my colleagues and batch-mates during their internships in SL, not so long ago. So, better not forget as per "Internet live stats" percentage of population with Internet in Sri Lanka is only 19.9% and internet literacy rate is even less than 20%, as per Department of Census and Statistics. Therefore, its high time the online majority isn’t the country’s majority. Well, there are many socio-economic factors that make people hate doctors in Sri Lanka, and out of which “Colonial factor” (I would like to call it “Rajapaksa factor”) is an important one. It is certainly a topic for another day.

Now hang on there! We need to get to the basics first. Do you have an idea about child mortality rate in Sri Lanka, vaccine coverage, maternal mortality rate, doctor patient ratio, have you ever been to a peripheral hospital, have you ever been to outskirts of northern, north-eastern, central, north central, southern, western and eastern provinces (not on road trips!) and spoken to villagers in their native lands? If you don’t have an effing idea on health status and its shortfalls in Sri Lanka, probably it's good to go and read on it first.

Alright, back to the topic! So the bottomline is, hatred and hate comments through online communities are not only about 'No PMC’ tagline, which could impose a falsified idea on people as if its against all private education institutions (as per the opinion of some of my colleagues) and students.

I repeatedly came across this quote "Maintain the quality and let them carry on with the PMC (SAITM)”. Here the million dollar question is “how to maintain quality and standards?” People don't bother about quality and in fact they don't understand the determinants of quality that healthcare people are concerned about. Take this simple example. Do you remember protesting state medical students a few years ago (They have been on the road pretty often over the last few years but I am referring to one particular struggle), asking for proper lecture theatres, professorial units and clinical facilities for Rajarata Medical faculty? Did you ever wonder why?

Were they told by the government that their degree program is not validated by UGC because of poor facilities? Did commoners take note of it and started picking on students of Rajarata University saying that they are not qualified enough to treat them? No! Those were requests arising from medical students, students' unions (politically inclined and non-political) and trade unions of doctors. 

In contrast, in the midst of tens of thousands of allegations made by SLMC (Sri Lanka Medical Council), GMOA (Government Medical Officers' Association), students' movements and the five member independent committee which was appointed by former Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena during Rajapaksa government, against the quality of training at SAITM, no one cared except a few parents of students of SAITM (about 10-15, and out of which most of them were doctors!) who sought legal advice on this matter, mainly to get their money back due to poor clinical training. And now, the SAITM (PMC in Sri Lanka) students are out of the blue, on the roads asking for clinical facilities. Then again, did you wonder why? Have they now realised that the training is not good enough? No!

It is just because the SLMC decreed that the clinical training provided by PMC is not sufficient to be qualified for SLMC recognition. This is where the problem is and now we can get to the bedrock of one pillar of the issue. When you buy a medical degree, you don’t ask for quality and what the student needs (or may be the parents of the student) is just an affordable degree, period! (provided you are not an exceptional high achiever). Also better not forget that many people get there or end up in private medical schools for many reasons (As per stats from Indian Private Medical Schools), when it is a commodity. Remember, its all about South-Asia, the largest cohort of self promotors who are annoyingly crazy about fake social status, in the world.

People start talking about the quality when they seek medical care and that is the consumer behaviour. At that point they will be more inclined to know whether the doctor is an Indian (at Lanka hospital), or a locally trained doctor or else, local vs foreign trained.

I had a couple of conversations with some of my friends on this and I threw the question, "Forget about PMCs, tell me whether you are happy to take your kid to [Name omitted]? (This person failed a few subjects at A/L examination but he studied at a foreign university to become a doctor) Everyone looked perplexed and nodded no. 
In my opinion, I would not hesitate to take my family members (parents or kids) to him as far as he gets through ERPM (Examination for registration to practice Medicine in Sri Lanka) / Act 16, because I know that he has passed Sri Lankan board exams, in which we trust. 
However SLMC has now rectified this issues with the new application process for foreign medical colleges through Medical Council. 

Whereas SAITM openly advertises “No Act 16 is required!”, when it comes to board exams. This is not a joke. Its a shame that SAITM owner Neville Fernando is afraid of allowing his students to sit a common exam, which in turn jeopardises the lives of Sri Lankans. It is not a surprise, given the fact that Neville Fernando and his house has failed to release entry qualifications of his students at SAITM, so far!

Talk about more socially inclined countries like most of the Europe, New Zealand and Australia, more social capitalist countries like Germany, socialist Cuba and capitalist USA. All these countries are good examples of solid and sound regulatory mechanisms for recruiting medical professionals and all of them have strict board exams to objectify the level of knowledge and hands on training of a candidate. It is to make sure that countrymen get access to safe medical care and their lives are in good hands. 

In Sri Lanka, we take examples from a few countries around the world when it comes to salient issues. For an example, we copycat our taxation from Singapore, try to duplicate ruling powers of Singapore and finally, trade and finance! Yes, it is also from Singapore while aiming at the same market share. We (as in the state) hate India (for the time being we are in India's good books) Bangladesh and China (government was in a romantic relationship with China a few years ago but not anymore) when it comes to power decentralisation, public transportation, education, medical care, public policies, hygiene, environment pollution, exploitation, women's rights and population growth. Our politicos like to be good acquaintances of the US and the U.K. (with a positive connotation to colonial mindset) if its about PR and Japan, if it is donations and aids. 

The hypocrisy is real! Our politicians, educationists and other people who support the PMC always tend to take examples from India, Bangladesh and China when it comes to private medical colleges. Well, even Singapore, the epitome of Asian capitalism doesn't have a Private Medical College (Duke-NUS is a semi government graduate medical school largely funded by the government and attached to NUS).

Think why our people do not bother to ask "Why are there so many cheap MBAs in every freakin corner of the city?” It's because of the same reason. Problem is with our people who want to opt for so called "elite" without understanding that spending a couple of million rupees (may be even more) on a degree or getting medical treatments from a private hospital doesn't get them there. If I cut to the chase, Sri Lankan middle class doesn’t like it to be called so. Ultimately it sums it all up to an income redistribution issue, if you bother to work it out. After all, without changing the system and without changing attitudes of people its absolutely not worth talking about “Quality and Standards”. Nobody on earth can maintain it, specially in a country like Sri Lanka that has ranked high in the list of degree of political corruption, as high as 85 (out of 165 countries), over the years.

I know I have been talking about the quality to a point of irritation. Don't you have the question “If the system is so fragile and vulnerable, how come you are confident that the state medical schools are well maintained and only qualified people are matriculated?"

Answer is quite interesting! There are many gates to make sure that correct candidates are always taken into medical schools in Sri Lanka. But just like the Swiss cheese model of error, there are rarely people who get in there without proper qualifications. Over the last 10 years I knew only one such incident and it's surprisingly (it's not so surprising, given the history of his father!) member of parliament "Chathura Senaratne", son of the health minister, Rajitha Senaratne. He was an Anandian and as per gossips from Ananda college he hasn't sat for his AL exam and with the result he obtained he got selected to either Ragama or Rajarata university. His Father pulled a few strings and finally got him to Colombo Medical College. He was 3 years elder to me and since he missed his batch a couple of times he ended up in my batch and particularly in my group because Senaratne and Saparamadu are two adjacent surnames in alphabetical order. So we were in the same clinical group for a few weeks during our second year and one fine day he told me and my friends “Machang, I have a spinal cord injury and need to go abroad for treatments. I am not sure of the day I can return...”. However he didn’t exactly know what was the issue of his spine/spinal cord and he vanished for years. In 2012, my good old friend Buddhika rushed in to my room at Bloemfontein with a paper in hand and asked me to read the article. It was a Sinhala newspaper and the headline said “Cat-loving doctor couple”. Well, it was about Rajitha’s son Chathura Senaratne and his girlfriend who studied at SAITM (She is still attached to SAITM). By then, Chathura had gained his MBBS from somewhere and he was, for us, more like a self proclaimed doctor. I hope this is a clear example of misleading political and media gimmicks that screw up systems in the "Wonder of Asia". Trusted news sources say that Rajitha’s daughter in-law is the reason why he is nauseatingly pro-PMC right now.

The next determinant is, income inequity which is an ever growing issue since 1948. So people increasingly tend to think that bridging this gap isn’t a tough task as far as they have a cling to a corrupt politician. And unfortunately it works and I have tons of examples (I am sure that everyone has a story to share) on how people with the mindset of getting rich overnight, get things done by being on good terms with politicians. Interestingly it has a direct link to the process of student enrolment to SAITM as well. One student from Negombo got in to SAITM through the previous Minister of Education (S B Dissanayke) who was a friend of the student's father without even a simple pass (S pass) for Advance Level (A/L) physics. It really does not matter whether the student has completed requirements on repeat attempts or not, as far as he gets enrolled into a degree program without qualifications. This is a serious issue and trusted news sources say that there are quite a number of similar stories at SAITM. It probably explains why the owner is reluctant to release entry qualifications of his students.

At this stage the other question is “Are you sure that 3 S passes is a good criterion to select a student for a medical degree?” You research and decide for yourself. One important thing to remember is, the medical profession is an age old field of tons of documented scientific work and it has evolved through millions of complicated processes to make sure that the patient/client is safe in the hands of a physician and NOT to make sure that everyone’s doctor dream comes true.

If we let this happen this time around, in a few years down the line it'll be just like Indian private medical schools. Even the secretary general of Health Ministry will open one, because it's always big money!

Well, if you are still not sure about ridiculous political backing to get this illegal proclamation legalised, I will share one personal experience with you. When I first wrote an article against SAITM back in 2011 as a member of the Medical Faculty Students’ Union (MFSU), it got published on a couple of websites to be thankful to DailyMirror and in turn it resulted in a special visit of a defence ministry agent to my Negombo residence showing how the government was pushing Neville’s almighty dollar and proving the existence of the then totalitarian rule.

Other counter argument to quality is, “It really doesn’t matter even if there are both qualified and under-qualified people in the field, market will determine who are the best and the next...” So the question is, what is the reason to get poorly trained or "low-quality"(because it is officially labeled that the institution is not capable of producing good graduates with sufficient training) doctors in the healthcare system? Why people deliberately want to change a system that performs well? Is it advised to change the winning team just before the finals of a cricket match? 

Now the question to the question is, "Are we running out of doctors?" Answer is yes, we did not have enough doctors in Sri Lanka, and the estimated doctor patient ratio a couple of years ago was about 1:1811 as per a survey done by a group of researchers led by Dr Mendis. This ratio is far below the global average of 170 per 100,000 population but is encouragingly more than that of average of South Asia (40+), Bangladesh (23), India (51) and Nepal (05) but not on par with Pakistan (66) and Malaysia (67.3). It was expected that the doctor to population ratio in Sri Lanka to rise to about 90 per 100,000 population by 2015, in other words one doctor per 1100 persons. We are on the subject of numbers! Do we know how many doctors we need for Sri Lanka? There are many considerations other than doctors per 100,000 population to estimate this. Has the Ministry of Higher education consulted the Ministry of Health about the number of doctors to be produced each year before opening new government and private medical schools at great expense to the country? There is a lack of coordination, dialogue and policy between the Ministries of Higher Education and Health, the production line and the consumer of manpower, respectively.

In short, ideally, the expected doctor-patient ratio has to be calculated and projected by the Ministry of Health (MoH) following a formal status analysis and the target has to be established as a KPI (Key performance index) in health manpower sector, and proper implementation plan has to be drawn together with the Ministry of Education to walk the talk as a ten year plan. But in contrast, the Ministry (MoH) has decreed that there is a doctor saturation in the country by 2016 and they are going to cut down the number of doctors absorbed in to the government sector. So, now the question remains a question! Why on earth the government is promoting private medical education? Is it to drag future doctors onto streets without internship opportunities and jobs? Create a work force into a field in which the government has cut down the demand? These policies and statements of the state clearly contradict each other like “living death” and promisingly show the corruption of prospects. 

Let's talk more about Medical Education. It is a vast field that has even created tens of thousands of job opportunities around the globe. Not to boast about Medicine but it is a well known science in the world that has its own largest discipline for its educationists. It is because it has evolved from Egyptian civilisation to Hippocrates to modern technology driven medical practice over 4000 plus years, with piles of documented scientific literature. So, you and I cannot take things for granted when it comes to medical education because it rolls back to basics, which is safety of the patient first. Please read and be informed before thinking of commenting on another discipline, on another science which could be totally off your scope. If you have been a strong supporter of PMCs without knowing much about Medicine I’m sure you will find “Blind men and the elephant” by John Godfrey Saxe interesting!

Having said that, don’t we need to reorient our health system? Yes indeed, we need big change! Our direct, referral-less channeling system, GP (General practitioner) system, inpatient and outpatient information systems, follow up mechanisms and many more have to be reoriented and a lot of changes need to be brought about in order to make our free healthcare system more accessible, safer, and more efficient. There are many interesting fields of study where people work tirelessly to make their professions efficient, safe and people friendly, including “behavioural insights”. So there are a lot of things for us to learn and implement, but if someone thinks that opening a private medical college and paving the way to open many more that are already in the pipeline will help you bring about a change, all I have to say is, my friend you gotta read first!

Well, Facebook was tempting me to share some memory a few months ago, if I am not wrong it was a snapshot of an article that I wrote to a newspaper on this issue more than 4 years ago and it was absolutely a tremendous pleasure when I realised that what we researched, said and believed four years ago is still valid and facts and statistics are precise as of today. 

I feel ridiculous when I recall how we used to counter argue, hilarious arguments like "it drains money out of the country", "government should encourage “such" investments", "creating opportunities", "quality is not an issue as far as it is monitored”, “you got to maintain quality and not to shut it down" and etc. Also we wasted a lot of time on counter arguing "no opportunities for talented students", "public sector is not accessible" and etc, because the answers are "Clearly hidden" in the campaign itself and the campaign is to find solutions to all these issues. These people who waste their valuable time on roads are protesting against obnoxious government policy driven pronouncements, to strengthen state education system, to reinforce medical education, to increase annual enrolments to universities with better physical facilities and to protect the residents including your near and dear ones. If it's today, I would not bother to answer any of those questions and instead I'd simply say "Are you freakin kidding me, just go and do some self-study on economics!”

The bottom line is; if people are inclined towards capitalism, more like a disguised middle class looking for trendy capitalism while living in a computer generated dream world (Matrix!), they should come up with smarter investment plans with clear win-win opportunities (there are tons of examples from around the world but I don't want to waste time on this) if not let it be equally accessible while creating more opportunities for students (ideally our people should be deprived of benefits of free services to realise how important it is for any country, any society!) If someone is arguing for a midway approach (for an example a tripartite approach), which is great; make sure that the Government is financially strong enough, knows how to prioritise, corruption free and been endowed with a trustworthy court system. Trust me, we are not any closer to realising this lucid dream.

Hope you can now get to the root cause of the issue!

Now you may try answering one last question. Do you like to give “Sakvithi”, the famous finance fraud which came to light a few years ago, another chance to restart his business with proper structure and transparency while maintaining standards? 

If you can answer “yes”, you can probably say yes to giving Neville Fernando another chance to maintain quality and standards and to restart his business which was built on fraudulence, infringement, deceitful advertisements and underhand money in millions (Please read the report of the five member committee for more details).

At this eleventh hour it is our courteous entreaty that the good-governance government retracts this rotten legislation and publicise the illegally maintained Private Medical College, SAITM for the sake of highest standards of Sri Lankan medical services and swindled students of SAITM.

I rest my case!

Samandika Saparamadu

24/01/2016

Dear PM David Cameron!

While reading an interesting article, I recalled a controversial statement made by the PM David Cameron, during the Calasis crisis, a few months ago. "A "swarm" of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking for better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs and it has got a "growing" economy". 

There is absolutely nothing to criticise on the use of word "swarm", given the fact that I'm coming from a country in which, the word "pa****" (Sinhala swear word) is used in the parliament!

But it is quite interesting to see how the United Kingdom that used to colonise the rest of the world, not-so-long-ago, is now afraid of being colonised. Well, civilisation affects everyone! 

PM Cameron said that Britain has got a "growing" economy! On the contrary, Britain's economic growth has dramatically slowed with a GDP growth at a pace of just 0.3% over the second and third quarters of this year! So I think its high time the Prime Minister should consider triggering a cascaded influx of immigrants (both migrants and refugees), with an eye to a booming economy, since there's plenty of research evidence supporting the rise of wages for everyone with an influx of lower wage immigrants and also there is a study that shows benefits to the local population with immigration in 19 out of 20 industrialised countries they studied.

Please note that this is a short satire essay but the facts are precise, as of today.

Samandika Saparamadu 

18/11/2015

P.S: No offence to my friends from the UK. 

Kite string tangle!

Tuesday morning rescue mission!

Spotted this sweet carnivore trapped in a kite string tangle, in the backyard. Our family effort was just enough to keep him off the sun and we had to call Navy SEALs (Coconut plucker Nimal) to complete the mission. 

Navy Seals arrived after work and cleared the mission in a few minutes. 

I told this fella that I am not going to judge him by what he eats and set him free! 

Finally he decided to pose for a photograph! Showing his injured wing...  

Samandika Saparamadu 
22.07.15

Singapore and India finally found one thing, in common!

The internet has revolutionised the computer and communications world like never before. This global network connecting more than 190 countries and hundreds of millions of computers and devices creates a beautiful virtual environment for people to surf, search, research, get to know each other, meet people and to live in. Yes, to live in a computer-generated dream world. It sounds as if Lilly Wachowski’s (Formerly Andy Wachowski) dream in The Matrix (a computer-generated dream world) is coming true, doesn't it?

According to Internet Live statistics, there were more than 3.3 billion internet users (a person who has access to the internet at home) worldwide, in January 2016, representing more than 40% of global population. We will see how internet usage may affect human behaviours.

There has been a tug of war between the benefits and limitations of this powerful tool, and surprisingly psychiatrists over the last two decades have found more evidence to support the latter.

 

Internet addiction, cyber addiction, internet addiction disorder, problematic internet use or computer addiction is a serious and insidious concern worldwide. According to a research paper published in 2014, the second most cyber addicted country in the world is Singapore, and it is not surprising given that Singapore is a country with internet penetration of more than 80% (of the population) and handful of recreational activities given the vertical distribution of population structure. The country that tops the list of cyber addiction is India. It is quite shocking, isn't it? 54% of the population of India cannot survive for 12 hours without the internet, as per the research. Going off on a tangent: the research paper in question was published by an Indian research agency and it lacks good methodology and diagnostic criteria, which in turn makes it a poor tool to validate and generalise its results.

With many research findings in the literature we can safely assume that internet addiction (IA) is a growing concern in India, given India ranking high up on the list of the most internet-addicted countries in the world. 

IA is still not classified as a psychiatric disorder in "Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders" (DSM) of the US, instead it appears in section III of DSM 5 as a disorder that needs further study and research and which will be considered for inclusion in the main book as a formal disorder in the near future. Psychiatrists predict that the disorder will become equivalent to nicotine and alcohol addiction, and the disease burden could get worse, making it a psycho-social and economic burden in a few years down the pike.

Cyber addiction has a nice and a cohesive classification describing 5 main areas of addiction: cyber-sex addiction, cyber relationship addiction, net compulsion, information overload and computer addiction. As you all know there is nothing much to preach on cyber-sex addiction. Cyber relationship addiction has been found mostly among introverts, and it might be a spurious, non-scientific solution, if you are suffering an “Irish curse” or if you are over scrupulous of physical appearance. Net compulsion is about compulsive online gaming, gambling, stock trading, or the compulsive use of online auction sites including Amazon, eBay, etc.

You would not believe me, if I say that an average Singaporean gamer spends USD 250 per year across all platforms according to a survey carried out by “Touch Cyber Wellness”. Singapore’s total game revenue last year was USD 201.6 million, which in turn makes online gaming a million-dollar business, with "Clash of Clans” generating a turn over of USD 1.8 billion and "Candy Crush Saga" with generating USD 1 billion last year.

Well, these are not interesting facts found on Snapple caps! These are horrifying facts of people becoming human lab rats of a kind.

Information overload could be disastrous to family life and it is diagnosed by compulsive web surfing, leading to lower work productivity and fewer social interactions with family and friends. Computer addiction concentrates on offline computer and smart phone games addiction. Symptoms of addiction can vary from psychological symptoms and signs such as isolation, feelings of guilt, euphoria, falling behind with assignments, falling grades, low mood, anxiety, and withdrawal symptoms (in general), to somatic symptoms such as dry eyes, backaches, neck aches, sleep disturbances, weight loss and even carpal tunnel syndrome (symptoms of CTS).

Griffith’s components model, Young’s Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and Criteria by 'Tao et al' are a few models which scientists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and doctors use to diagnose internet addiction. Griffith’s criteria of internet addiction provide a good guideline to diagnose this to-be-listed disorder: preoccupation, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, relapse, conflict in life, etc. Young’s criteria of IA includes, 1. preoccupation with the internet, 2. the need to use the Internet for increasing amounts of time, 3. unsuccessful efforts to stop using the Internet, 4. mood change when attempting to stop or cut down on internet usage, 5. staying online longer than intended, 6. jeopardising of significant relationships or opportunities due to excessive internet usage, 7. lying about internet use, 8. using the internet as an escape from problems or seeking to relieve bad mood states. This has to be evaluated in the domain of 'non-work related' internet use. Addiction is thought to be present when a person reports experiencing five or more of the above eight criteria, for any given period of time, whereas in DSM, IA is diagnosed if criteria (5 out of 8) are present over 12 months period.

There is a general consensus that total abstinence from the internet should not be the goal of the interventions and that instead, abstinence from problematic applications and a controlled and balanced internet usage should be achieved, which is quite sensible.

Moreover, facing IA could be a challenge for a country like Sri Lanka, with internet penetration at less than 20% and extremely poor internet literacy rates. IA (in the  content of the detrimental effect it has on productivity and economic growth) could be an interesting topic for discussion for a developing country like ours, given the opportunities for expansion of usage and limitations of solid systems. In other words, Sri Lanka’s population growth is about 0.81% per annum whereas the growth of internet users is about 9% per year, which in turn predicts a steep growth in the number of and percentage of illiterate internet users, due to the lack of sensible and achievable policy changes and changes of infrastructure in education. However, increasing numbers of internet users at this rate and quality will open up thousands of opportunities for entrepreneurs while reducing productivity, which will ultimately endanger overall outcome, provided no intervention has been taken to intervene impending issues.

As Stanley Baldwin, British Conservative politician, three time Prime Minister and the man who dominated the United Kingdom government between the two World Wars said, "Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. Giving the power of using the internet without teaching ethics and ensuring literacy could encourage addiction as well as it could make people go blind on the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of hate speech.

Don't be afraid to seek professional support if you feel as if you are a victim of the internet. Always remember that the nature has been here for 4.5 billion years (if you believe evolution!), the modern form of human evolved about 200,000 years ago and we enjoyed our childhood at its best in 70s, 80s and 90s and it wasn’t with the internet. Thus, it was certainly more exciting and thrilling than posting a nude photo on snapchat, living in Instagram or waiting for the happy moment of "last seen to online to typing" on WhatsApp. After all, it’s all about you, your health and your happiness; so, give some thought to 'responsible use of the internet'.

Samandika Saparamadu

22/10/15

ISIS is creating an ‘Insecure Sphere for Individual Soul (isis)’liberty.

I am sure many of you must have already heard and seen recent events and terrorism promoted through ISIS. After watching the video which was released by the Islamic extremist organisation a couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

The definition of terrorism as per Oxford English dictionary is 'unofficial or unauthorised use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims; such practices used by a government or ruling group, in order to maintain its control over a population; such practices used by a clandestine or expatriate organisation as a means of furthering its aims'. But this definition has quite a few loop holes and FBI definition of international and domestic terrorism is more inclusive of religious extremism of all sorts including Islamic terrorism. Examples of organisations such as LTTE and BBS from Sri Lanka are vivid when it comes to international and domestic terrorism respectively.

Killing a human being is a crime both under federal law and as per the teachings of religions. Is how its done important? yes indeed, it tells the moral of the assassinator, brutal vibes, training, inception of execution, politics of the executor, tolerance and the will.

Please try to recall and compare a few historical incidents of civil wars, assassinations and torture chambers in Sri Lanka with this index case. Countless and well known LTTE mass murders and assassinations,  rape cases and massacres committed by SL army, and detention and torture chambers in Batalanda which involved a mass murder and was partly backed by Ranil Wickremesinghe, our incumbent prime minister and the SSP N Delgoda, who are said to be indirectly responsible for maintenance of unlawful detention houses at the Batalanda Housing Scheme. There had been a few evidence to testify these allegations against Mr RW and no conclusive evidence to set him free either. However it is not conclusive that RW is not guilty as well and the commission report is yet to be released, officially (trusted news sources say that the report is a good weapon against the prime minister all the time and it has even been used during the Air Lanka scandal of CBK!) 

This is a brief account of Sri Lanka’s state violence and LTTE terrorism, just to help everyone to reflect on what we see on the internet today through both ISIS and American press. These crimes that I mentioned above had taken place many years ago, either with a similar character or in the most brutal and agonising backgrounds in our own motherland, but then again the question is; is there a difference between these incidents? if yes what exactly it is? 

It has not been a politically sounded step to make those crimes public and air to be witnessed by the world, because most of them were categorised under ‘state terrorism’, then why LTTE after being a  terrorist organisation did not use it as a weapon? it is because the LTTE used its immaculate image in search of funding and they were looking for loopholes of the govt to prosecute leaders. The best example is the Channel 4 video. 

In this case ISIS which is another Islamic extremist terrorist organisation which is consolidating power in Islamic Caliphate, is trying to say something else to the world. Wait..!

In Sri Lanka we know many absurd news channels like Swarnawahini, Derana and Hiru TV which use human agony by the means of broadcasting tears, coffins, dead bodies in order to hold grounds in the competitive news arena and simply to capitalise the micro market in Sri Lanka. So as the ISIS. It uses these videos as a versatile tool to gain funds, intimidate people, to implant a fake imagination in people’s minds to convince them that it is unstoppable and to make people believe in terrorism and that it could be infuriating. The second use of these videos is the american press, even though it comes in the name of Islamism at times. These videos have been widely used by the US to justify and to defend their defensive and oppressive acts in different parts of the world.

So what can we do to prevent terrorism and to give a drop of relief to the humans who suffer in their native lands. The number of options that we can choose from, to support the oppressed are very limited since its extensive involvement in deep driven politics and economics but we can opt for the simplest change that everyone of us can do right now to make a simple but an important change. 

Sit down relax and start reading the world history of religions! Try to understand the instances that one religion could effectively bring peace to the entire world or at least a great majority of the population at a given point in time. You will soon realise that its an absolutely a null search result. 

Islamic and Catholic religions wrote the history with blood sheds with the only exception that Islamism beat the Catholic church to it, since killing of non-believers was not a part of it from its inception. Buddhism had it’s own ups and downs with blood sheds which were carried out in the name of the religion in order to secure relics just the way the Catholic empire did in Europe. Finally Hinduism and mythological wars and teachings in Rig Weda. These are just a couple of very superficial and arbitrary facts that I just tied together to get to one point. As you all know all the prophets and religious leaders/preachers did not promote violence and not at least non-violent civil disobedience, at the inception of every religion! Everything was written in the history by our hoi polloi because of the inherent nature of man to promote separatism while being a social being!

The scariest fact after all is, the spread of fake facts on religions, ethnicities and etc through social media in countries like ours where the Internet literacy is extremely poor. It was counted to be around 16% among the urban population (depending on the use of emails) in 2010. But now the use of the internet must be considerably high given the exposure to social media, but literacy is still very poor, indeed! When people get to read and listen to hate speech and evil propaganda with no idea on how to do proper fact checks and how to assess the reliability of sources they read from, it always works to the detriment of a country’s development and economy specially in countries like ours because of it’s beautiful inherent social convention of peace among different ethnic groups.

Another important thing is to stop propagation of terrorism and to make countries to hold their own federal laws against religious extremism without regulating freedom of speech and freedom of religion which is certainly an ambiguous area. Meanwhile we should be careful and smart enough to understand and avoid the traps of religious extremism that is omnipresent in our country in form of almost every religion, that sneaks in to our minds without our knowledge and understand that the most important religion is promoting equity and equality, securing life and dignity of human person, safe guarding rights of one another and solidarity. 

There are many people in every country who work tirelessly towards these goals, to enforce governments in decision making processes, for social justice and to promote human rights. Stop  being a type-worrier by sharing and posting on social media. Go, get involved in establishing processes, educate another human and make a change.

Getting back to the point: what we can do to make a small change right now? spread peace! I remember this verse which was written by the veteran Sri Lankan poet Mahagama Sekara, in his book "Prabuddha"

"If the war was created in the minds of people, cannot the peace also be created from and within the same place? Will we be able to build the ultimate society with war and atrocities?”

If you really want peace, work for justice! Help our dying and slowing down planet earth to breath without religious extremism.

Samandika Saparamadu

23/02/2015

Sri Lanka and Pakistan remain the poorest spenders on education in the region!

The right of education is enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on the 10th of December 1948 as a Human Right. I quote below from the Article 26 of UDHR “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”

Government of Sri Lanka through Act, No. 21 of 1996 established the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka in fraternisation with the UDHR and the Sri Lankan government is responsible for the maintenance and reinforcement of Human Rights in the country.Above proves that education is a basic human right and that higher education should be available on merit. Our governments were in concurrence to adhere to the above Declaration, but gradual choking of funds for free education and unnecessary compulsion in privatisation of education has led to a point where it could be termed as a violation of Human Rights.

The Private University concept was mooted in the late 1970s with the liberalised economy. It also takes us to the painful memories of the late 80s of the traumatic period when hundreds of young men were brutally killed. This saga of selling education has continued with eight attempts to form Private Medical Colleges during the last three decades. The lust for super profits by some unscrupulous local businessmen in exploiting private university education has led to recent controversies and malpractices.
 
This conflict became apparent with the release of the report of the five member committee which was appointed by the Hon. Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena “to look into the matters related to the Private Medical School (SAITM) at Malabe”, in March 2012. According to the Report, Malabe PMC was established in 2009 as a BOI (Board of Investment) project of a businessman, with no affiliation to Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy and without any formal approval of the Ministry of Health (MOH), the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) and under the name South Asian Institute of Technology and Management (SAITM). In the very beginning, in defiance of the allegations of the SLMC and the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), SAITM kept on matriculating students for a degree program via propaganda which is not accepted by the SLMC and MOH.

This Institute promised its pupils a Medical degree (MD), without even being endowed with the basic prerequisites of a hospital with adequate patients, special facilities and a pool of qualified staff of adequate stature. This we consider a deliberate offence caused upon the students of the SAITM.

It is sad to find that some students who do not even have 3 simple (S) A/L passes are now studying at the SAITM. As it is mentioned in the report, the officials of the SAITM admitted that they had enrolled two students who did not meet the minimum SLMC eligibility criterion which is just 3“S” passes. This pathetic situation at the beginning signifies the magnitude of the issue of tomorrow. This affirms the validity of the allegations by the SLMC, GMOA and thousands of Medical students opposing the Malabe PMC.

A more shocking revelation is that the majority of the faculty staff serving the SAITM currently are foreign medical graduates who could not get through the Act 16 examination even after many attempts. These who have not passed Act 16 examination are, according to Sri Lankan standards not considered doctors. As students at the state Medical Colleges, we are shocked to witness this sinister attempt to devalue medical education and the medical profession in the country.

A profound controversy and a heated debate arose regarding the existence of the ERMP (Examination for Registration to Practice Medicine in Sri Lanka) or ACT 16 Examination with the emergence of PMC. It is unthinkable to come across paper advertisements of the Malabe PMC, on two Medical degrees. One is the twining programme where the candidate is supposed to come through the ERPM exam and the other is the SAITM medical degree where no Sri Lankan standard is required to practice medicine in the country.

To practise medicine in the US and in Australia medical graduates should pass the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination) and AMC (Australian Medical Council) examinations respectively which even Sri Lankan graduates find difficult to pass. In the same way, any person of any nationality who wishes to practice in Sri Lanka should pass the ERPM exam. It is aimed exclusively to maintain the standards of medical practitioners of Sri Lanka.

Moreover, it has to be stated that foreign graduates who sit the Act 16 examination suffer a failure rate of nearly 80 percent. The amusing point is through a special gazette the Ministry of Higher Education has decreed that the PMC students need not sit for the Act 16 examination. This means, the category of the 80 percent students who failed Act 16 in the past will now be awarded medical degrees.

This means that Sri Lankans may be treated in the future by doctors who have not passed Act 16 examination or who have not competently qualified in Sri Lankan standards. If we passively allow this tragic legislation to take its natural course, the future of patients is anyone’s guess. So it is the responsibility of the intelligent reader to appreciate impending catastrophe.

Countries possessing high medical standards such as Cuba and New Zealand have rejected the PMC concept and in the UK and Australia, countries which earn enormous amounts of foreign exchange through education, have issued permits for only one and two PMCs respectively. The most important point is that the entry criteria for both government and state medical colleges remain the same, which in turn emphasises the commitment of those countries in maintaining the standards of their health care sectors.

But here in Sri Lanka, our relevant authorities proclaim that they are to issue permits for three more
PMCs, other than the current Malabe PMC. Moreover, reliable sources revealed that there are 15 more proposals pending in the pipeline. I would like to implore the government to explain the way this would serve our students and the masses.

The initial blow of all these is the drastic cut of funds for universities by the government which have resulted in the exodus of the qualified teaching staff from universities into private institutions because of the low salaries paid to them by state universities. Finally a gradual choking of the financial livelihood of state universities will result in a premeditated natural death of free medical education eventually.

Moreover, the five member committee report explicitly states the deception which was driven by the SAITM to circumvent the BOI, the SLMC and the MOH. This is an infraction of statute, deliberately carried out against its students and the masses with the sole purpose of accomplishing this particular business venture and of keeping the cash cow alive.

In this deceptive and unpatriotic ambiance perpetuated by the state allowing greedy businessmen to make more money, it is not an illusion for us to observe PMCs functioning under the auspices of the state and its bureaus. But it is astonishing to see our countrymen deceived by false propaganda by the state. At this crucial hour it is our patriotic entreaty that the government retracts this obnoxious legislation for the sake of the integrity and the perpetuation of the highest standards of our medical profession and for the safety of life of our countrymen.



Samandika Saparamadu
(From Daily Mirror in 2012)