As usual as we are always used to, our federal government sometimes comes up with knee-jerk solutions to problems which will not solve but only create more problems for it in the long run.

The Health Ministry has all of a sudden decided on extending the working hours of doctors serving in the health clinics around the nation with the reason that it is a move which is necessitated due to the dengue outbreak around the country, perhaps due to the dry spell that we seem to be experiencing now.

We are not sure as to whether increasing the working hours of doctors in these health clinics are going to be of any use, but one thing is for sure which is we are sure to increase our working costs which will inevitably bear upon the taxpayer. I am told that these doctors will be paid RM80 per hour which is two times or even more than the best private clinic can offer in the market, but is the dengue outbreak going to be contained? I doubt it.

Many of these doctors are poor souls who fear voicing out their grievances to their heads of department or the state health directors for fear of the usual treatment that Malaysian civil servants so frequently get, which is to be transfer out of their comfort zones and far away from their homes and family. This treatment is what makes the once capable civil service that was known for its ability to the state of affairs that it is in today.

Further most of these health clinics are staffed by women doctors who have come out of the mainstream at the general hospitals and entered into this stream to have stable working hours and a family life to contend with.

The current working hours at these clinics where the services are provided till 5pm and at times till 9.30pm have been working very adequately at most clinics in towns where there are large populations. Most of the patients being the ones who are mostly coming in for the common ailments have become quite used to coming to these health clinics after office hours to seek treatment for themselves as well as for their sick family members.

But having that in mind we, too, would have to think about the doctors and their healthcare staff members who are manning these clinics all through these long hours. The last thing that we may not want is to have a whole lot of good doctors leaving the civil service in droves and in their places we get the “new half baked cookies” from the many mushrooming private medical colleges that we have.

The Najib Abdul Razak administration and Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam should note that extending the working and operating hours of the health clinics is not going to see a slump in the number of dengue cases being reported, it is the civic-mindedness of the people and the environment that we are to protect, which makes all the difference.

If the government is willing to pay these doctors RM80 per hour till 11pm daily, then these doctors may just sit in and put in the hours but the question is, are we getting anywhere by implementing this policy? has a study been done to see how many patients actually come in at these hours?

Enhancing manpower skills

All these funds which are spent on the operational expenditure to keep these clinics running can be put into enhancing manpower skills by sending doctors who work in the health clinics for specialisation diploma courses.

This in turn will help the ministry and the government as a whole, when more of our capable health care professionals are well qualified and trained as oppose to the new Generation X ‘pencil poking doctors’ that we get from the fly-by-night medical schools that seem to be cropping up here and there.    

We had one of the best medical services in the Commonwealth before, we did well because we were left with a good system which we improved on based on local condition and needs and we should strive hard to bring it to the next level by providing quality services to the people at affordable cost.

Politics, apple-polishing of politicians and the business elites should be the last thing on the minds of the decision-makers. We have good infrastructure but we never seem to appreciate our most important asset which are our people. Let the doctors rest, they are human, too.