No two ways about it, we need more medical staff

Photo: Filepic/The Star

THE Malaysian Medical Association’s call for a 48-hour work week for doctors is reasonable and long overdue (“MMA suggests even shorter hours”, The Star, May 9; online at bit.ly/starhours). But let us be clear: the real obstacle is not a lack of doctors or money – it is decades of poor planning and misplaced priorities.

My analysis, based on Health Ministry data, shows:

> There are 27,200 housemen and medical officers in public hospitals, currently averaging 80 hours/week.

> To bring them down to a safe 48-hour week, we need 20,000 additional doctors in this category.

> The annual cost? Roughly RM2.8bil – about 6% of the Health Ministry’s 2026 budget of RM46.5bil.

That sum is not impossible. In 2025 alone, the government spent over RM80bil on subsidies (fuel, electricity, chicken, eggs). It found billions for the MRT3 transportation project, for new embassy buildings, for countless vague “development allocations”. Surely, RM2.8bil to prevent exhausted doctors from making fatal errors is a wiser investment?

But instead of hiring, the ministry offered permanent conversion for 11,000 contract doctors. That helps job security – but it does not add a single extra doctor. The work hours remain unchanged.

The truth is that this crisis was created by the government’s own planning failures:

> Chronic underfunding of medical training slots.

> Reluctance to create permanent posts despite annual budget surpluses (RM27bil in 2024, RM32bil in 2025).

> Over-reliance on cheap contract labour, which fuels burnout and exodus to the private sector or overseas.

We can rationalise the budget. We can cut the unnecessary – the duplication, the low-impact projects, the wastage. The government has already shown it can find money when it needs to (eg, the civil service salary hike of RM10bil-plus).

What we need is a serious, time-bound commitment:

> A special allocation of RM2.8bil in Budget 2027 specifically for hiring 20,000 new housemen and medical officers over three years.

> A workforce audit to eliminate ghost posts and bureaucratic bloat that diverts funds from frontline clinical staff.

> Accountability – if hospital directors continue to impose 80-hour weeks, they must face consequences.

Previous governments created this mess. Only the government of the day can fix it – if it chooses to.

PHILIP MR

Seremban