Hospital employees to stage demonstration

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 December 2000, 19:07 GMT]
Doctors, nurses and other employees of Batticaloa General Hospital have planned to stage a protest march in Batticaloa town tomorrow morning demanding that Security Forces engaged in battle in the North and East should not use civilians as human shields and that no armed personnel should travel in vehicles carrying civilian passengers, hospital sources said.

The marchers will also demand that Tamil doctors serving in the South should be immediately transferred to North-East hospitals and that both parties in the conflict should enter into peace talks to find a solution to the ethnic conflict, sources added.

The march will start at the General Hospital premises and will proceed to the Playing fields near the Gandhi Statue.

The spokesperson of the Association of Medical Doctors of Batticaloa said that a memorandum will be submitted to the Batticaloa Government Agent, Deputy Director of Security and International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). The spokesperson added that the memorandum will also be sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Meanwhile, a Tamil doctor complained that Sinhala doctors serving in the war torn North-East region receive a special allowance of more than 100% of their salary, a luxury not afforded to the Tamil doctors.