Pushed to the private sector

I THANK the Health Ministry and Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah who recently announced the implementation of the flexible hour programme, an initiative proposed during Budget 2018 in an apparent effort to prevent specialists from leaving government service to join the private sector.

With due respect, my gratitude towards the announcement is not because of the new policy but because the nation has been reminded once again that the state of our profession is not all that rosy in the government sector. It is, in fact, ailing and in serious need of remedy. Instead of being a solution, the proposed initiative is actually disappointing as it reflected yet again the superficial understanding and poor grasp of the root problems facing the medical profession. Now that’s an irony, isn’t it?