LET me share with you what many won’t. An average permanent medical officer in the government service earns between RM 6,000 to 8,000 a month depending on their grade and the number of on-calls done.
Let me share with you what many don’t know. A government medical officer works nearly 80 to 100 hours a week depending on which field they partake in (on-calls can be as long as 33-hour stretches – sometimes without time for meals/showers/sleep).
Now imagine that we are moving into a time where medical officers do not have permanent posts, are being paid less and are not offered scholarships to pursue their specialities.
I hear of colleagues also complaining that there are some fields where they have pursued a masters and a PhD but without any signs of specialisation within the system.
This is the system we live in. We work till it affects our physical and mental health (at times to no avail) yet we are treated like dirt.
The Malaysian Medical Association recently conducted a poll on Twitter and it showed that on average, 95% (96% on the English poll and 93% on the Bahasa Malaysia poll) of Malaysians felt that doctors are taken for a ride by many sectors.
To top it all off, some of my colleagues called and expressed their frustrations on the phone with me. Some were even being denied their basic salary hike/grade hike (all time-based), even though they qualified for it.
Some were told to be happy at where they were and be thankful for what they have.
Some were in tears – their family members needed to go to the National Heart Institute (IJN) for their appointments but their family members’ names had been deregistered from the list of patients continuing their follow-up in IJN (cleared because they did not attend the clinics during the pandemic).
Many were told to get referrals again from their local/nearest cardiology departments and they, too, have been reluctant to provide a referral back to IJN as they have been “instructed” to prevent referrals to IJN.
Colleagues of mine are tired, overstretched, fatigued by the pandemic – and all medical appointments for their family members have been deferred even as these practitioners are fighting the pandemic, so their families have opted to just continue medical therapy, hoping to get their reviews after things settle.
They were told that the IJN government-patient decluttering had begun – many doctors and their family members were not part of the shortlisted patients. In fact, one colleague was told that for IJN procedures, even government servants would have to pay for materials like stents, etc – something which was done for free as part of being a government servant (some as costly as RM7,000).
How does a medical doctor survive? They can’t earn enough, they are not getting their entitled benefits, their current benefits are being withdrawn, the society jumps when the government announces a bonus for them at the beginning of the year, they have poor quality of life, they are now made to pay for what has been agreed to be their entitlement, they cannot specialise, they cannot be gazetted and yet, are being made to work like robots.
These are young doctors, with families, with children, with elderly parents, with aspirations – but are being denied at every turn.
And yet in this country, we offer felons and people convicted in court to be given government land/houses and perks, etc, when just by screening their accounts circulating on the social media and looking at their luxurious lifestyle, they very well do not need it.
Fair? Wake up, Malaysia! – The Vibes, November 26, 2021
The writer is a reader of The Vibes
