It was reported yesterday that thousands of medical, dental and pharmacy graduates finally got some relief with the government offering contracts of employment as per the proposal announced in Budget 2017. A health ministry official said that since December 2016, 1219 candidates had been offered contracts by the Public Service Commission (PSC).
While this was a welcome relief for the graduates, there are 3 issues of concern which the government must address and resolve.
Firstly, when the Prime Minister announced the contract scheme last year in his 2017 Budget presentation, he mentioned that with the introduction of the scheme,approximately 2,600 graduates who cannot find horsemanship placement can now work at a hospital on a contract basis.
This means that till today, less than half the graduates have been offered employment on contract basis.
How long more must the rest wait?
Secondly, question was previously raised as to whether the medical graduates will be offered permanent jobs after end of contract, yesterday’s announcement has revealed that not all will be offered permanent posts.
Hence, the question of doctors becoming jobless will now become a real problem in Malaysia.
Is it fair for our youths who have toiled for five years to finally end up jobless due to bad planning by the government which results in over supply of medical graduates?
Thirdly, the contract scheme is only an ad hoc measure when what is needed to address and resolve the problem of doctors becoming jobless is an effective long term solution.
A long term solution will mean tackling the real and main cause – the oversupply of medical graduates. But there is no political will to address resolve this issue.
The issue of oversupply of doctors has been raised several years ago by Malaysia Medical Association and Malaysian Medical Council. I have also raised the issue inside and outside the Parliament but the government’s response to the issue which should be regarded as a crisis has been slow and disappointing with no effective plans to address the issue. Worse, there were even initial denials that there would be oversupply of doctors.