ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa late Friday (11) evening declared the public health service and the supply of electricity as essential services after a series of power outages and protests inconvenienced the public.
In an extraordinary gazette notification issued Friday night, the president said the declaration was being made considering the services provided by any public institution that is engaged in electricity supply and the health services are “essential to the life of the community and [are] likely to be impeded or interrupted”.
The president’s announcement came after some government officials claimed that trade unions were engaged in acts of sabotage aimed at making the Rajapaksa administration unpopular with the public.
Protests and a strike organised by health sectors workers last week crippled the public health service across the country and resulted in thousands of people, many of them low income earners, queuing up for hours at government hospitals.
Some officials also blamed the recent spate of unannounced power outages on alleged saboteurs. The power cuts have done little to help the government’s eroding popularity, analysts say.
Rajapaksa has allocated a protest site in the vicinity of his office for those who wish to hold protests. However, the recent protests both by state-run Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) employees and health sector workers have resulted in traffic jams as they took their agitation campaigns to the streets, inconveniencing the public. (Colombo/Feb12/2022)