The director of Polonnaruwa Hospital has decided to buy a portable x-ray machine at a cost of ten million rupees instead of a mobile x-ray machine that could have been bought for a price between 25 and 30 lakh rupees.
Epa Dharmakeerthi, general secretary of the technicians union, said that it is very difficult to obtain X-ray copies using the portable copier and that the copies cannot be taken accurately, and the Ministry of Health was informed not to purchase these machines.
Epa Dharmakirthi said that with this notification, an additional secretary of the Ministry of Health immediately stopped purchasing 40 portable extractors that had been planned to be brought to Sri Lanka during the COVID.
He said that even though the Ministry of Health stopped the plan to buy such machines, the Director of Polonnaruwa Hospital has gone ahead, contrary to the decision, and spent ten million rupees for a portable x-ray machine.
Despite the purchase of a portable machine at a cost of ten million rupees, the radiologists have stopped using the machine, and the hospital director has taken disciplinary action against those officials, the union secretary said.
He said that they will start a one-day token strike at the Polonnaruwa Hospital and its affiliated hospitals on February 2 against the actions of the hospital director and raise black flags in the radiology departments of hospitals across the island on that day.
The association states that if disciplinary actions continue to be taken unfairly against radiology technicians, they will resort to continuous union action at Polonnaruwa Hospital and all affiliated hospitals from February 6.
