PARLIAMENT Almost 150 medical specialists have been resigning from the Health Ministry annually over the past six years, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.
Deputy Health Minister Dr Hilmi Yahaya said 128 specialists resigned between January and September this year while 124 left the service last year.
"Their continued departure from the service is one of the factors for the shortage of medical specialists," he said when replying to a question from Ikmal Hisham Abdul Aziz (BN-Tanah Merah) in the house.
Ikmal Hisham had wanted to know the seriousness of the shortage of medical specialists in the country and whether Malaysia would be able to achieve the ratio of one doctor to 400 patients by 2020.
Dr Hilmi said one reason for the resignation of medical specialists was the long time it took for them to be promoted.
He said the most number of resignations was among the specialists on Grade U53 and U54 who had to wait for up to 10 years for a promotion.
"That is why we plan to introduce Grade 56 which is being worked out by the Public Services Department," he said.
He also said that the government was offering "full paying patients" rates that were a lot lower than what private hospitals charged to attract more people and enable the specialists to increase their income.
Dr Hilmi said that up to September this year, the Health Ministry had more than 4,000 specialists in various fields.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam said over 3,700 medical, dentistry and pharmacy graduates have been given placements in government hospitals up to September this year.
He said these graduates were out of the 6,587 graduates who registered and were notified by the Public Services Commission for an interview, comprising 4,457 medical graduates, 880 (dentistry) and 1,250 (pharmacy).
"Out of the total, 57.4 percent of the graduates were given placement and the remainder could not be given placement because there are not enough posts," he said when winding up the debate on the 2017 Supply Bill for his ministry.
Subramaniam was replying to several members of Parliament on the surplus of doctors due to many medical graduates who had not been given placements to be appointed to serve in the government sector.
Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali (BN-Bagan Serai), who interjected during the winding-up, asked on efforts taken by the government to address the problem of medical graduates' placement, especially when 11 public universities and medical colleges would produce at least 5,000 surplus medical graduates.
Subramaniam said one reason causing delays for graduates to be given placements was the significant numbers of graduates from within and outside the country that exceeded the existing posts in the ministry.
He said there are 33 public and private higher education institutions (IPTA/IPTS) in the medical field, namely 11 IPTA and 22 IPTS that could be monitored by the ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Higher Education and its agencies nationwide.
"But the ministry cannot control those who go abroad for their trainings," he said.
According to him, the government's initiatives to overcome the constraints included placing graduates in private hospitals to receive trainings equivalent to government hospitals besides reducing the recognition of the many medical universities and colleges being opened at present.
"We also encourage government agencies such as the Public Services Department (PSD) and Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara) not to send doctors abroad and PSD defines the training practice within the country."
- Bernama
