I read the news below in today’s Star and I began to wonder whether this will be the faith of our doctors in the future. I was informed that MOH has already started to give contracts for housemanship. This basically means that after 2 years of housemanship, there is no guarantee that the contract will be renewed for MO. This puts you equivalent to a temporary teacher under contract and the same problems will occur. Most likely, the contract will only be renewed on you accepting where you are going to be posted, as the number of post is going to be very much limited. E.g: if MOH asked you to go to Limbang, Sarawak as a MO and you refuse, MOH will not renew your contract which basically means you are jobless! You also need to apply for a job in government sector after housemanship.Of course, government sponsored students will be given priority.
As David Quek mentioned in his speech (http://myhealth-matters.blogspot.com/2011/11/standards-of-medical-education-in.html), SPA is asking MMC to remove the compulsory service so that the government do not need to provide a job to you after housemanship. There are a lot of implications if all these comes true. Firstly, an inexperienced doctor is not going to be a good GP. With litigations rate going up everywhere, these doctors will not survive with the public demand. They will be sued all the time. Secondly, if you do not get a job in civil service, you can forget about postgraduate training and applying for Master’s. At this point of time, only training in government hospitals is recognised. Even if you get a contract job, it does not mean you will be posted where you want to. Your training can still be compromised. The way I see it, there is going to be a lot of chronic medical officers in near future with little post-graduate opportunities. This is when your basic medical degree recognition is going to be very important in finding a job/postgraduate training somewhere else in this world.
Even Academy of Medicine Malaysia is very much worried about postgraduate opportunities in near future. Residency style training is being considered to shorten the training programme and produce specialist faster but this need to be carefully deliberated. It’s implication to our healthcare system also need to be considered as not all our hospitals are equipped with all speciality.
Soon, the title of the news will be “Temporary doctors protest unfavourable terms in contract!…………………..”
Temporary teachers protest unfavourable terms in contract
By KANG SOON CHEN
educate@thestar.com.my
KAJANG: A group of temporary teachers protested outside the Hulu Langat education district office over new terms in their service contracts.
They claimed they were at a disadvantage with the new terms.
Under the new contract, their salaries will be reduced from RM2,500 to RM2,300 and they will not receive allowances or EPF contributions from the government as of next year.
The terms, effective Oct 15 this year, also pointed out that the teachers had to return the allowances and EPF paid to them for October and November.
They were also disgruntled that they would not get paid for the December school holidays.
“It is unfair,” said the group’s spokesman.
“The terms of the new contract overwrite the earlier one that we signed this year and that was supposed to be effective until the end of the year,” she said, adding that they would lose their jobs if they failed to comply.
“There was also no guarantee that we will be absorbed into permanent positions.”
In March, Education director-general Datuk Seri Abdul Ghafar Mahmud announced that 6,000 of the 13,000 temporary teachers were ready to be absorbed as permanent teachers.
Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong said the ministry was working on a solution to end their predicament.
Earlier, he had said the government’s decision to absorb temporary teachers into permanent posts had resulted in insufficient funds to pay their salaries.
