The Government Medical Officers’ Association says it will take further action against what it calls political agendas aimed at creating conflict between different grades of doctors, four days after the Cabinet approved drafting work on a public service category for specialists alone.
The union said a committee bringing together the Ministry of Health, medical professional associations and other stakeholders had already agreed to establish a single new service category and salary structure, to be called the Sri Lanka Medical Service, covering doctors of all grades, Hiru News reported. An assurance to the same effect was given during the third reading of the 2026 Budget, the association said.
A proposal has since been put forward to create a separate category exclusively for specialist doctors, the GMOA alleges. It said it does not accept that proposal, citing the effect on the free health service and on patient care of writing “a separate service minute for only one category of doctors”.
What the union is objecting to
The GMOA did not identify the proposal by name. But on 25 August the Cabinet approved the appointment of an official committee to draft precisely such an instrument — a Service Minute establishing a “Specialist Medical Officers and Specialist Dental Surgeons Service”, a category confined to consultant-grade staff. The union’s use of the term “service minute” matches that decision.
LankaNewz has not established that the GMOA statement responds to the Cabinet decision, and Hiru did not connect the two.
A Service Minute is the founding instrument of any public service category in Sri Lanka, fixing recruitment criteria, grades, promotion procedure and disciplinary authority. Which doctors fall inside one therefore determines their pay scales and promotion paths for years.
Retention is the stated goal on both sides
Both the agreed Sri Lanka Medical Service and the Cabinet’s specialists-only category are framed as answers to the same problem: keeping doctors in the country. The GMOA said retaining medical officers, specialists included, had become a major challenge through the economic, social and political instability of recent years, and that cooperation across all grades is what sustains the free health service.
The association said it had made both verbal and written representations to the relevant committee. Despite several requests to the authorities, it added, it has still not been given a copy of the committee’s report.
No other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own account of the statement at the time of writing.
