The Government doctors are on a strike binge again. Once more, it is not an agitation for a need of medical personnel or, of medical service facilities, or, even that of patients. Rather, the Government Medical Officers are agitating (again) over their livelihood interests – or, at least, what the GMOA says is their livelihood interests. The GMOA is repeating its claim that ‘free trade agreements’ are detrimental to the country and, to their professional interests. The rationale of the GMOA is that allowing the entry of foreign workers or foreign products into the country displaces domestic livelihoods and domestically produced goods and services.
The GMOA’s mantra is an old one; as old as the first initiatives of national development we, Sri Lankans, undertook as an emerging new nation. Since those pioneering days of mapping national progress, we have debated the pros and cons of ‘protectionism’ as against ‘free trade’. On the one side there were proponents – social and economic interest groups, experts, intellectuals – of ‘protectionist’ economic policy. On the other, was a similar cluster of groups and personalities advocating a policy of an open market and free trade.
Our seventy-year history as a developing nation has shown us that a bit of both is best. A combination of both approaches, seems to have served us well as we now enter middle-income country status.
Certainly, the public control and maintenance of certain aspects of production of goods and services has helped tremendously – especially, in the early achievement of many social development goals. That is how we produced far more professionals than most developing countries – professionals who did not hesitate to abandon homeland to migrate for better opportunities. That is also how we set up a health infrastructure better than most developing countries – but then lacked the doctors to staff it due to that drain of doctors abroad.
At the same time, free market economic thinking served well at a juncture in our modern history when the nation had experienced some decades of a largely controlled economy and, frustrated by the slow pace of development, sought alternative strategies. J. R. Jayewardene’s ‘Singapore Model’ election platform won massively.
The introduction of the ‘open market’ strategy in 1977 has taught us the value of both these strands of socio-economic policy. The Open Market strategy of 1977 actually built on the firm socio-economic foundation was already achieved by successive previous regimes that had emphasized a state-led strategy.
Building on that foundation, all regimes post-1977, have pushed ahead with free market policies that served to quicken our national progress toward middle-income status.
Despite being in a country where medical education has been for free since Independence, a shortage of doctors has been an issue for Sri Lankans – for some, a matter of life and death.
Why? Because, from almost the first post-Independence generation of doctors, there has been a steady outward flow of medical personnel from the country as they sought greener pastures. Even today, we do not have enough doctors to serve people throughout the country. Outside the few urban concentrations, the availability of doctors is meagre and, non-existent in areas distant from those major cities. Our medical services infrastructure bears a similar profile.
But is it only medical professionals who abandon their homeland and seek better prospects elsewhere? The outflow of professionals and scientists began from this country alongside the output of such professionals from our state-maintained education system. The elasticity of the global labour market prevails over national needs, just as much as it prevails over the social loyalty of those ‘educated’ professionals fleeing the country for an affluent life abroad.
Sadly, the outflow of professionals tends to be a permanent emigration and a permanent loss of human resources for the country. This is the ‘brain drain’.
By contrast, is the more recent and far bigger outflow of less educated workers for temporary employment overseas. Our ‘migrant workers’ not only provide a massive inflow of foreign earnings. They are also bound to return, and do so as more experienced and more sophisticated stakeholders of our national labour force.
All this shows that, given careful management, the operation of a freer market still serves us best. Those who seek a different life elsewhere are free to go (despite needs here). And those who temporarily seek riches overseas and then return, will do so to better serve their nation. Meanwhile, economic policy must ensure that even with foreign labour, our economy’s labour needs are met.
Free Trade Agreements between countries are meant to open up bilateral trade and investment – including technology and human resource sharing. Given the size of our population today and its financial capacities, there is an unmet demand for more widespread health services and better quality treatment. At the same time, the country also needs more skilled labour and unskilled labour in some sectors. Ask the agro-exports and construction sectors.
Readers must ask why the Government Medical Officers strike again over an issue of trade philosophy – i.e. ‘free trade’ or ‘no free trade’. Although many of them would be the first to abandon our shores at the hint of an opening in Central Africa or even the Pacific, these Government Medical Officers are again denying their vital services over an issue of national trade policy.
Readers must decide how much this type of so-called ‘union action’ is genuinely to do with union concerns or to do with the pure politics of the union leadership. After all, the late J. R, Jayewardene’s historic ‘Singapore model’ economic strategy launched in 1977 has stood the test of time and politics.