posted December 11, 2005 08:01 AM         

I cannot remember the exact year I was appointed as the first Sinhala Medical Superintendent of the General Hospital [and as it happened, the last]. It was when Rohana Wijeweera was first arrested and imprisoned next door to the hospital, and opposite my official bungalow. I had completed a secondment as lecturer in Public Health at the University of Peradeniya and was selected to the administrative grade. Prof. K. Rajasuriya, Director of Health Services asked me at the interview: ?What is the first thing you will do on assuming duties?? And I did as I told him that it is to sort out the system of gaining admission/treatment at the hospital.

On my first visit, I saw that that there was separate queues for Muslim women and was told it is a necessary custom. I immediately abolished it noticing there were no separate queues for women at bus stands. I made a special queue for children and old persons, irrespective of gender and race. This was my first clash with the Hospital Committee ruled by powerful, wealthy businessmen, private practitioners, and government officers such as the District Engineer. They were all Jaffna Tamils. The first Muslim graduate from the area had been a Dental Surgeon and the first Tamil doctor was an intern at the hospital. Muslim farmers were derisively called Mattayas and wore shorts coming down the knees. Others were petty businessmen, butchers and reared goats let to graze freely. The animals invaded the hospital premises and even ate bed head tickets! I ?arrested? them and threatened to sell them to the butcher in an unsuccessful attempt to fence and keep them away. They bred like folk at Kattankundi who had the highest birth rate in the world. The Muslims were the poorest most deprived and discriminated. For example, when I posted the monthly drugs of chronic patients such those as with diabetes and epilepsy to Kalmunai hospital, a Jaffna Tamil, the Superintendent of Health Services, stopped it.

The Batticaloa Tamils were treated not less badly. For 25 years, no local had got a government job. Even my peon was from Jaffna, as was the entire staff of consultants and senior doctors. The Superintendent of Police, Government Agent and District Judge were Sinhalese. All government staff, senior and junior was from the North. Batticaloa Tamils were the scavengers and labourers at the hospital. A Pharmacist from the area supported me and took a leading part in many of the structural and administrative changes I made to the hospital. But it was my peon who let me into the truth. I plucked gunny bags of mangoes from my bungalow garden and distributed them to all staff whereupon he told that it was the first time anyone had done such a foolish thing. Before, the mangoes were all sent by train to Jaffna! It dawned on me then that, for the Jaffna Tamil, the Batticaloa district is the granary of the North. That is why Prabhakaran wants it. Karuna Amman took 25 years to realize it - and also why Batticaloa Tamils are dispensable. He would have been a child during my time.