Medical Laboratory Technologists attached to Government Hospitals have threatened to strike against a decision of the Health Ministry to use private sector medical lab facilities instead those available in government hospitals.

The MLTs Union said this move would make the poor patients pay very high charges for lab tests.

Senior bureaucrats in the ministry were working together with some doctors in the government hospitals to send patients for medical tests to the private sector and this could cost patients considerable amounts. This move had been made by the bureaucracy to earn large sums of money by way of commissions given by the private sector labs which are prepared to give considerable percentages for "business introduced by the government hospital authorities", MLTs Union Secretary Ravi Kumudesh said yesterday.

He said both the government and the poor patients, who come for treatment to the government hospitals, will have to pay large sums of money for these tests while there were 32 government hospitals with medical lab facilities which had served the patients all these years without a problem.

Though President Kumaratunga had told the Health Ministry officials not to create further problems in the public health sector the officials seem not to have taken her advice but were all out to make money by way of commissions at great risk of the patients he said.