The Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, there is an issue concerning Health Service Committee employees. Pursuant to our request, the subcommittee chaired by the Secretary to the Prime Minister has granted approval to recruit an additional 1,990 Health Service Committee employees. The problem relating to these employees is twofold: on one hand, there is a shortage; on the other, past recruitments were done from limited localities. As a result, we cannot deploy those recruits across all regions of Sri Lanka according to service needs. That is the core issue. However, in the upcoming recruitments, we will consider the actual vacancy numbers at each hospital and recruit in a manner that distributes staff across the country.

¶ 02 In the North, including the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, there is a shortage of Health Service Committee employees in several institutions. To bridge these gaps, some groups have served for two to three years. We intend to take their period of service into account in the next recruitments. To keep hospitals functioning, they have rendered significant service either voluntarily or for a nominal allowance paid by Hospital Development Committees. We will try to consider them too in this recruitment. However, we cannot recruit everyone; appointments will be made after considering age limits, educational qualifications and all other criteria.