KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 19 — Dr Kelvin Yii has urged the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Public Service Department (JPA) to rethink their decision to cut the Regional Incentive Payment (BIW) allowance for health care workers.
The Bandar Kuching MP said the government should ideally revert to the old BIW framework, in which the allowance was based on a percentage of an officer’s basic salary, for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists posted to Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan.
Under the new Public Service Remuneration System (SSPA), new civil servants from the management and professional (P&P) group of Grades 9 to 15, who were appointed from December 1, 2024, will only receive an RM360 fixed monthly rate in BIW allowance for transfers to those regions.
The BIW allowance for existing permanent officers appointed prior to December 2024 is frozen at the last-drawn amount before SSPA implementation.
Dr Yii pointed out that even under the old BIW framework, the national health service had trouble attracting and retaining medical professionals to address dire needs in Sabah and Sarawak.
“Such steep cuts will just aggravate an already dire situation of insufficient medical professionals in Sabah and Sarawak, jeopardising the quality of care for our patients,” Dr Yii told CodeBlue when contacted today.
“The recent statistics of 43 per cent medical officer no-shows in Sarawak for permanent postings this year itself should serve as an alarm of the critical situation we are in.”
The DAP lawmaker noted that the doctor-to-population ratio in Sarawak is approximately 1:510, translating to about 1.96 doctors per 1,000 population, compared to the national average of 1:406 or 2.46 doctors per 1,000 population.
“This means Sarawak has roughly 21 per cent fewer doctors per capita than the national average,” said Dr Yii.
“To match the national average, Sarawak would need hundreds more doctors, especially specialists. Such policies not only doesn’t help, but may send the lack of medical personal situation in the region into code blue (grave situation).” Code blue is a universal hospital code that signals a medical emergency when an adult patient enters cardiac or respiratory arrest.
CodeBlue reported yesterday on how the BIW cuts affected new medical officers posted to Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan, as a UD14 medical officer appointed from December 2024 would only receive RM360 monthly under SSPA, 64 per cent lower than RM1,000 previously.
Pharmacist groups have also criticised the steep BIW cuts for pharmacists posted to those regions, noting that a UF12 pharmacist similarly loses nearly RM8,000 annually or tens of thousands of ringgit over a five-year period of service.
