Protect youth from bankrupt political forces - Minister

Indigenous Medicine Minister Tissa Karaliyadda said on Thursday that students of the Indigenous Medical Faculty had caused a rumpus for nothing because steps had already been underway to meet most of the demands put forward by them.

He said this when he met parents of the 14 Indigenous Medical Faculty students arrested by Police for allegedly trespassing into Ministry premises and causing damage to Ministry property who were released on bail, at the Ministry.

Minister Karaliyadda who requested the parents to have mercy on their children and protect them from the sinister and bankrupt political forces who were trying to use them as a cats paw said the Ministry has received Rs. 36 million for the necessary extensions to the Borella Ayurveda Hospital and construction work would be completed soon. He agreed that students would face some temporary inconvenience at present due to the demolition of some buildings and hectic construction work going apace.

Delving on the allegation about shortage of medicine and the lack of placement for graduate doctors, the Minister said there was no drug shortage as such but only a delay in procurement due to the strict adherence to procedural rules.

The Minister who said that not only ayurveda graduates but western medical graduates too faced the unemployment problem said there would be vacancies for 600 medical graduates in the preventive service since the President had paid attention to the improvement of the community health service.

There would be a demand for Ayurveda medical graduates in the private sector too in the near future, he said. In response to a request made by the parents for the Minister to intervene and get the 14 students exonerated the Minister said he had no authority to intervene in the legal process as it had to take its own course.