Stand Up !

In The Star on 3rd June 2009. At least someone up there still cares:

Government doctors still not being paid their due

THE Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) would like to refer to the letter “Deal for government docs reasonable” (The Star, May 12) by the PSD which stated that the initial salary of government Medical Officers was the highest compared with those of other schemes of service in the public sector. The MMA acknowledges that there has been a significant increase in the salaries of government doctors over the past few years, and we would like to thank the PSD for having given due consideration to our requests to improve the remuneration of such doctors. However, we would like to clarify a few points made in that letter. Firstly, with regards to the on-call allowance, we would like to point out that the RM150 per night is only for medical officers doing “active” on-call duty, i.e. working 16 hours per day beyond their normal working hours. These are usually the medical officers in the Medical Unit, Surgical Unit, etc. Medical officers working in less “critical” clinical departments like Pathology or Radiology are only eligible to claim RM50 or RM90 per night while on call depending on the number of hours spent at the hospital after office hours. There are also some medical officers such as those working at the health clinics who do not have any on-call allowances. Secondly, paying RM80 per hour for locum work is a very good initiative by the Health Ministry. Unfortunately not all medical officers are given the opportunity to do this, as the extended clinic hours (5pm to 9pm) only involve 16 polyclinics out of more than 800 government clinics in the country. The locum work is mostly done by the doctors working at a particular polyclinic and doctors working at other polyclinics (which do not have locum services) in the same district do not get any chance at all. Thirdly, the statement that in 2010, newly appointed medical officers would be receiving a salary of RM6,000 per month as they would be promoted from UD41 grade to UD44 grade upon completion of two years’ housemanship and upon confirmation in service is exaggerated and misleading. The actual UD44 salary at P1T1 is RM3,028.90 with fixed allowances of RM1,450.00 (including critical allowance of RM750, housing allowance of RM400, elaun khidmat awam of RM300 and COLA RM100 to RM300 depending on the location). Although a doctor may earn up to RM6,000 by doing a lot of active calls or working many hours doing locum, this would not be the salary of the majority of the first year medical officers. The MMA has repeatedly requested the Government to introduce a separate service scheme for government doctors from that of other civil servants, as a doctor’s undergraduate training is longer at between five and six years, compared with other professionals. Our working hours are long and protracted and there is a period of five years of compulsory government service which is not a requirement for other professionals in the civil service.

DATO’ DR KHOO KAH LIN, President, MMA.