The government will find it impossible to retain doctors and university staff on government pay scales if hospitals and universities are not privatised, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

"Since the government cannot raise the salary scale of these people without triggering a demand for an unaffordable pay rise for almost one million other government staff, it is likely that the ultra-modern new hospitals and universities which are being built will be without doctors and teaching staff," he said.

Mahathir said this at a national conference on 'National Vision Policy: Privatisation and the Eighth Malaysia Plan' in Petaling Jaya. The conference, of which the main organiser was the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute, was attended by about 500 people.

Mahathir said the government faced a dilemma and even developed countries with National Health Schemes insisted on the public paying a contribution to the scheme.

"Malaysia is not a developed country, yet medicine is free or has nominal charges only.

"The government would like to give free medical treatment to government employees and poor people but many can and should pay for their medical treatment," he said, adding that similarly, university fees should be paid by those who can afford it.

Increased greatly

Mahathir conceded that there was much objection to the privatisation of universities and hospitals.

"When free medicine and subsidised university education were introduced, the cost to the government was low," he said.

"In the early days, a bottle of cough mixture cost two cents. Today antibiotic capsules cost as much as RM10 each and have to be taken four times a day for many days while surgical costs run into tens of thousands of ringgit," he said.

Mahathir said the cost of university education has increased greatly and it was impossible to raise the pay of the teaching staff without attracting similar demands from the rest of the government's employees.