I support the call of Health Minister Dr. Subramaniam upon Public Service Department to lift the freeze on new posts for the ministry. The effort to control the size of civil service should not be at the expense of health of the rakyat.
According to the “World Development Indicators: Health Systems” provided by the World Bank, the average “Physicians per 1000 people” ratio for upper middle income nations is 1.8. As for Malaysia, the ratio is only 1.2.
Not only that, the average “hospital beds per 1000 people” ratio for upper middle income nations is 3.4 while the ratio for Malaysia is only 1.9.
Also, only 4.0% of our GDP is spent for health expenditure, but the average health expenditure for upper middle income nations is 6.2% of their GDP.
It is evident that our healthcare service is way below the par and we definitely need more hospitals and doctors. But the freeze of new posts as announcement by PSD will jeopardize the opening of new hospitals and the service rendered to the patients.
PSD has said that the freeze of new posts in the civil service would be offset by efforts to increase employment opportunities in the private sector. However, turning to private sector also means higher medical bills. Putrajaya is going to collect RM23.2 billion this year from GST. We expect better public healthcare service in return!
While the size of civil service is also a huge concern, an outright freeze on new posts over all ministries does not make any sense. Other than Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education will also need to hire more teachers as new schools are on their ways.
Instead, PSD should pin down and reduce the size of certain departments that does not really benefit the rakyat, such as FLOM, Special Envoys and Special Advisers under the PM’s Department, Special Branch, Jabatan Hal Ehwal Khas (JASA), JKKKP and many others.