The President of the College of Medical Laboratory Science, Ravi Kumudesh yesterday (20) claimed that the Ministry of Health has deliberately neglected the recruitment of allied health sciences’ graduates while wasting millions of rupees to recruit diploma holders for the related training.

Speaking to the media yesterday, he claimed that qualified graduates as well as diploma holders enrolled under a probation period are at risk of losing their jobs due to this thoughtless decision taken by the Ministry. “According to a request made by the Ministry, since 2006, the Ministry of Higher Education has been adequately training allied health sciences’ graduates for the health service. But, the Health Ministry has failed to recruit them into the service and has repeatedly recruited diploma holders spending millions of rupees unnecessarily. Due to this arbitrary decision taken by a former Health Secretary, in addition to wasting a lot of money, qualified graduates as well as diploma holders who were recruited for training are to lose their jobs. Meanwhile, almost a 1,000 allied health sciences’ graduates are unemployed,” he claimed. He also alleged that the former Health Secretary in question took this decision on the request of a specialist working at the Medical Research Institute (MRI) and an Additional Secretary to the Ministry. “The former Secretary in question took this decision under the influence of an Additional Secretary at the Ministry and a specialist working at the MRI who benefitted by implementing this programme. Consequently, the Government has to bear a huge loss. We urged the Government that damages should be recovered from this former Secretary and the Additional Secretary who endorsed that decision,” he further claimed. He also claimed that even though the President continues to declare that he will not cut the necessary allocations for the recruitments to the health service, without properly obtaining the necessary approvals for the recruitments and without reserving the allocations, the relevant Additional Secretary rendered these graduates unemployed for three years, thus bringing the Government into disrepute.

Several attempts to contact the Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella and the Secretary to the Ministry proved futile.