I read with much amusement when Ida Bakar tried to point out the similarities of the Edmund Terence Gomez case with government-sponsored graduate doctors not returning to serve the country.
As much as I agree with the general public opinion with regards to Gomez's predicament, I truly cannot accept the similarities between both the cases.
Gomez case is one of an intellectual being treated unfairly by his employer (that is Universiti Malaya in this case) even when he pledges his loyalty. Whereas the other is more about government-sponsored medical students abroad who refuse to return and provide the services needed by their countries who sponsored them.
The cost of sponsoring medical students abroad is extremely high, money that can be used to produce more doctors locally. This money, which comes from the taxpayers, needs to be spent wisely and absolute returns given back to the general public.
Due to the extremely high cost, students from average middle-class families simply cannot afford to do their medical studies overseas without any sponsorship.
All those government-sponsored medical students should have understood these conditions. It is their duty to serve their country if their scholarships require them to be bonded to the government for a certain number of years.
However, priorities for these doctors may have changed as soon as they graduated and faced the prospect of returning home. As greed sets in, these government-sponsored doctors tend to forget all the commitment that they made when accepting their scholarships or loans.
Their acts are not much different from that of loan defaulters and can even be considered an act of treason to their country.
All of the ideas about ‘professional freedom’, ‘quest for continuous improvement’ are simply lame excuses given by these doctors. I guess that if their paychecks in Malaysia are equivalent to that what they are currently getting overseas, I am quite sure that most of them will come back home and serve their country.
Working overseas, these doctors are not even contributing to the government coffers (in the form of Malaysian tax) that was once used to sponsor them.
As such, I am proposing that the government request these sponsored graduates to immediately pay back the cost involved in sponsoring them (together with all the interest incurred if necessary) so that this money can then be used to sponsor local medical students.
I’m sure these local graduates will be more than willing to help the country alleviate its doctor shortage.
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