Khairy Reiterates Promise To Let Contract Doctors Apply For Masters Scholarship

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PARLIAMENT | Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has reiterated the government’s promise to allow contract medical officers (MO) to apply for the Hadiah Latihan Persekutuan (HLP), which is a full scholarship from the Health Ministry for doctors to pursue specialisation programmes in public universities while working.
Previously, contract MOs were only allowed to request further training through the parallel pathway programme, while the HLP was reserved for permanent MOs, he said.
“Among the solutions (the contract doctors) are waiting for is the opportunity to get HLP sponsorship so that they can further their studies to the Masters level.
“Right now, the condition is that only permanent MOs can apply for it and contract doctors can only apply for training through parallel pathway but now we want to provide the same opportunity to (the contract doctors).
“This is for their future and I think it is something they have been demanding and waiting for,” Khairy said during the question-and-answer session in the Dewan Rakyat today.
He was responding to a question from Rusnah Aluai (Harapan-Tangga Batu) who had questioned how the Health Ministry plans to ensure the future of the contract doctors.
Khairy also said a special committee had been formed on Aug 20 to look into formulating short-, mid-, and long-term plans to resolve this contract doctors issue.
The committee will focus on coming up with the allocation request to the Finance Ministry for HLP, creating more permanent positions and examining the strategy to increase job opportunities in the public healthcare system, among others.
The issue of the contract doctors had come under the spotlight after a group of them organised a nationwide strike in July in a bid to lobby for better job security.

 Earlier, Khairy had explained that the contract doctors system was started in 2016 due to the spike in medical graduates yearly, whereby the Health Ministry did not have enough positions to offer permanent positions to every graduate.

He then addressed concerns raised by Rusnah about the long waiting time to get an appointment with a specialist despite the influx of medical graduates.
“To be honest, right now, we do not have a shortage of graduate doctors but what we need right now are specialists,” he said.
Currently, there are about 13,000 specialists from both the public and private sectors, but Malaysia needs 28,000 specialists by the year 2030, he said.
“The Finance Ministry should give its commitment so we can train these doctors to become specialists to fill our need in 10 years to come, where our disease burden will increase due to the ageing society in Malaysia as well as the increasing incidences of non-communicable diseases,” he said.
Previously, Khairy had said he aims to come up with the best solution on the issue of the contract doctors.
At that time, he had said several measures were being worked on but declined to reveal them as the ministry was still in discussion with the Treasury Department and the Civil Service Department. - Mkini

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