Don't allow govt specialists to provide "private treatment"

Groups have come out in protest against the government's plan to allow government specialists to provide "private treatment" after working hours as a means of boosting their income.

Aliran asks the pointed question: Does the Health Ministry truly care for the poor?

Exhausted specialists cannot be expected to be efficient and remain true to their calling. We are not told how many hours per day and how many days per week these specialists would be permitted to work outside their working hours to earn extra money. Wouldn't this arrangement require these specialists to work well beyond the already very long working hours? And if so, would it be healthy for them or beneficial to the profession?

In the end, the people who would suffer from this arrangement are the poor. It is the poor who would be sacrificed and marginalised; health care would be out of reach for this majority of Malaysians. This is not the solution or remedy for the legitimate grievances of the specialists.

Parti Sosialis Malaysia, on the other hand, wants civil society to stop the BN from killing our public health system.

We appreciate that government doctors work hard, and in difficult conditions – we want them to be paid better. The pay-scale in IJN is much better than that in the Health Ministry, but this is not due to supplementary income derived from private practice after office hours but by a better salary structure. The PSM would like the Ministry of Health to set up a separate Service Commission for Health Care Workers and offer them a better salary structure – something similar to the IJN scale. The BN government spends only 1.9% of GDP on health care provision, whereas the WHO has advised an outlay of 5% of GDP for developing countries. (UK spends 9.8% of GDP on health!) An outlay on health is an investment in our people – and as the government itself often says our human resources are the nation’s most precious resources.