Health Minister Dr. Ramesh Pathirana said that a Cabinet paper was submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers to increase the retirement age of certain healthcare services including nursing staff to 61 years.

The minister revealed this in response to a question raised by MP Gamini Waleboda in Parliament today (07).

MP Waleboda further stated that even though a decision was taken to extend the retirement age of nursing and certain healthcare services to 63 years, it was not implemented. Due to this “the principal of the Nurses’ Training School in Ratnapura has retired and is now staying in the hospital without handing over the duties to another person or the next principal.”

He also claimed that even heads of departments do not know whether the retirement age of 63 years will be implemented or not. Therefore, it has been difficult to maintain the operations of the school, he said.

In response to this, Health Minister Dr. Ramesh Pathirana stated that there is an ongoing court case related to the issue. “We were asked to agree to increase the age up to 61 years. We also submitted a paper to the Cabinet regarding this. There will be no extension beyond 61.”

In the meantime, the minister said that about 3,000 new nurses are to be recruited, and that the applications for this purpose have been called and the interviews have been completed. The minister stated that currently, there are 45,000 in the nursing service and there are only about 1,000 vacancies remaining to be filled.