Government doctors still not being paid their due

“Deal for government docs reasonable” (The Star, May 12) by the PSD which stated that the initial salary of government Medical Officers was the highest compared with those of other schemes of service in the public sector????? Is it a myth or reality?

DATO’ DR KHOO KAH LIN, President, MMA said....

1.R egards to the on-call allowance, we would like to point out that the RM150 per night is only for medical officers doing “active” on-call duty, i.e. working 16 hours per day beyond their normal working hours

2. Not all medical officers are given the opportunity to do RM80 per hour for locum work, as the extended clinic hours (5pm to 9pm) only involve 16 polyclinics and the locum work is mostly done by the doctors working at a particular polyclinic and doctors working at other polyclinics.

3. The actual UD44 salary at P1T1 is RM3,028.90 with fixed allowances of RM1,450.00 (including critical allowance of RM750, housing allowance of RM400, elaun khidmat awam of RM300 and COLA RM100 to RM300 depending on the location) and not a salary of RM6,000 per month

Conclusion : MMA has repeatedly requested the Government to introduce a separate service scheme for government doctors from that of other civil servants, as a doctor’s undergraduate training is longer at between five and six years, compared with other professionals.

Ref: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/6/3/focus/4003932&sec=focus