KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 18 — Medical officers newly appointed or eligible from December 1, 2024, receive a smaller Regional Incentive Payment (BIW) allowance than their seniors for transfers to Sabah, Sarawak, or Labuan.
Under the Public Service Remuneration System (SSPA), which replaced the old Malaysian Remuneration System (SSM) for the federal civil service on that date, the new BIW rate was reduced to a fixed rate of RM360 monthly for the management and professional (P&P) group of Grades 9 to 15.
Previously, under SSM, the BIW allowance was set at a percentage of an officer’s salary, with 12.5 per cent for those earning RM4,839.66 monthly and above.
A UD14 medical officer appointed from December 2024 with a basic monthly RM8,000 salary will only receive RM360 BIW a month under SSPA, 64 per cent lower than the RM1,000 monthly that they would have received under SSM.
BIW payments are RM7,680 less for that doctor in a year under SSPA compared to SSM.
According to a 1,002-page circular by the Public Service Department (JPA) on SSPA implementation, the BIW allowance rate for existing recipients is frozen at the last amount received before SSPA came into effect.
Hence, even though medical officers appointed before December 2024 will receive a higher BIW rate than their counterparts who came into service from that month, the former’s BIW allowance won’t rise in line with their salaries.
Although the monthly RM360 BIW rate applies only to new P&P civil servants appointed from December 2024, the huge gap in BIW payments between these doctors and their colleagues from older cohorts reflects unequal remuneration for the same amount of work performed.
The BIW allowance, which was created in 1988, is payable to the following federal civil servants posted to another region from their home region:
- Officers from the peninsula who are transferred to Sarawak, Sabah, or Labuan;
- Officers from Sabah who are transferred to the peninsula, Sarawak, or Labuan;
- Officers from Sarawak who are transferred to Sabah, the peninsula, or Labuan;
- Officers from Labuan who are transferred to the peninsula, Sabah, or Sarawak.
Officers born in Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan, who serve in their respective home regions, are also eligible to receive BIW.
According to JPA, BIW is intended to help cover the cost of living.
Although the Critical Service Incentive Payment (BIPK) allowance, along with BIW and the Remote/Interior Area Incentive Payment (BIP) allowances, have been changed to fixed rates under SSPA from the previous percentage of basic salary under SSM, the government decided to retain the old fixed BIPK rate of RM750 monthly for six critical service schemes: medical, dental, and pharmacy officers and lecturers. (Except for these schemes, the P&P group now receives RM165 a month under SSPA).
The new fixed BIPK monthly rate is RM150 for the implementation group of Grades 5 to 8 and RM135 for Grades 1 to 4. Previously, nurses received BIPK of up to 15 per cent of their monthly basic salary.
“Unsurprisingly, this revised ‘incentive’ framework is unlikely to trigger a rush of young doctors volunteering for postings in Sabah, Sarawak, or Labuan,” a specialist doctor from Selangor, who has been serving in the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Sabah for more than a decade, told CodeBlue yesterday on condition of anonymity.
“By reducing allowances for the very cohort most likely to be sent far from home — to regions already grappling with chronic understaffing, weaker infrastructure, and higher living costs — the federal government once again signals how East Malaysia remains an afterthought in national workforce planning.
“As no-show rates rise and vacancies deepen, the BIW cut under SSPA risks reinforcing a long-standing pattern: policies crafted at the centre that save money on paper, while Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan continue to absorb the human cost.”
The Madani government’s decision to slash BIW payments under SSPA occurs amid doctors’ dissatisfaction over the lack of a relocation allowance for contract medical officers who are posted to Sabah or Sarawak for permanent placements.
Permanent appointments are no longer the carrot once seen to retain doctors in public service. Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad told the Dewan Negara recently that only 57 per cent of 764 contract medical officers reported for duty for permanent placements in Sarawak this year as of November.
This indicates that 332 doctors were no-shows or rejected their permanent appointment offers.
The health minister previously told the Dewan Rakyat in March 2024 that the number of medical officers who didn’t report for duty for permanent postings surged 1,333 per cent from 78 doctors in 2022 to 1,118 in 2023.
No-shows jumped from 2 per cent to 20 per cent of those offered permanent positions in that period.
Two years later, in 2025, the percentage of medical officer no-shows for permanent appointments, at least in Sarawak, has more than doubled to 43 per cent.
Although SSPA offers P&P civil servants a 15 per cent salary raise, with the Phase 2 salary adjustment set for their upcoming January payroll, doctors’ groups argue that health care workers need special consideration due to the critical nature of their work and the importance of the national health service.
Under Budget 2026, the on-call allowance (ETAP) rate for medical and dental officers was raised by approximately 40 per cent, costing the government an additional RM120 million and pushing up the cost of ETAP to RM407 million annually.
