Dr Kelvin Yii
KUCHING (Aug 3): Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii urges the government to amend its policy for contract appointment system for medical officers due to one-sided loopholes.
He said many medical officers had expressed their disappointment in the current policy particularly on the selection criteria, performance review, and a perception where the Yearly Target Performance (SKT) was not transparent and open to favouritism and bias.
Among the changes Yii suggested was to amend the existing policy to allow these contract-based medical officers to be able to get Federal Training Award (HLP) so they would be able to continue their studies to Masters degree at local universities.
“If they can continue their studies at a local university, their contract can be extended and their advanced qualification would be able to be used as a criteria for permanent placement, because we need more medical specialists in the country,” he said.
Yii was speaking during his debate on the motion of thanks for the royal address by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong during the Parliament sitting this morning.
His second suggestion was to consider the services of the junior doctors and medical officers at district or rural hospitals as one of the criteria for permanent placement.
He revealed a written reply by a minister who said working experience or the willingness to serve in the rural areas were not being used as a criteria when extending the contracts of medical officers and junior doctors or for their permanent placement.
Yii said that this would discourage any junior doctors and medical officers from serving in the rural areas where they are much needed.
“In Sarawak, 45.6 per cent of rural clinics have no doctors, only being run by nurses and medical assistants,” he added.
In fact, he said, some rural medical facilities have no road access and could only be reached either by boat or with the service of flying doctors with a frequency of once a month or some even once every three months.
“Even with once a month visits, the doctors only spend three hours there at one time. So imagine out of 30 days, for 29 days the rural folks are without any doctors,” he said.
With that he urged the Ministry of Health (MoH) to include serving in rural areas as one of the criteria to consider when extending the contracts of permanent placement for medical officers and junior doctors, to encourage them to serve in the rural areas.
After their housemanship, if they were willing to continue serving in the rural areas, their contract could be extended or they could even have their permanent placement there, Yii added.
At the same time, Yii also thanked the MoH for opening 102 permanent placements for medical officers and doctors in Sarawak, and urged the ministry to give priority to Sarawakians to fill in the posts.
He said if non-Sarawakian medical officers or doctors are to fill some of the posts, many of them after some time will apply for a transfer back to their home state or closer to home, and this would not solve the shortage of doctors in Sarawak.
He said if this issue is not being solved holistically, the issue will never be solved in the long run.
“This is also in line with Sarawak’s right under the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) on ‘Borneonisation of workforce’ or to increase local employment.
“I hope the ministry will consider this,” said Yii.