KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 — Contract medical, pharmacy, and dental officers who received permanent appointments last year can receive transfer allowances now, according to Dzulkefly Ahmad.
The health minister mentioned this in an op-ed for The Edge, which was published last Monday, about his plans for 2026 to 2027.
“Just recently, we secured a major policy win from the Ministry of Finance (MOF): contract officers (2025 cohort) transitioning to permanent appointments are now eligible for transfer and relocation allowances,” he wrote.
“This resolves a critical gap, ensuring that those who relocate to serve the nation, particularly across the South China Sea, are finally provided with the support they deserve.”
When asked if the transfer allowance extended to this year’s cohort, the minister’s office told CodeBlue yesterday that the relocation allowance for contract doctors, pharmacists, and dentists was only available for 2025 permanent appointments for the time being.
In 2023, the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) Human Resource Division (BSM) said contract medical, pharmacy, and dental officers taking up permanent positions were not eligible to claim for transfers because the period of their service was disrupted from contract to permanent.
Ahead of mandatory Sabah and Sarawak placements under the new ePlacement system, contract doctors’ group Hartal Doktor Kontrak (HDK) said in June last year that relocating from the peninsula to East Malaysia can cost up to RM8,000 to RM10,000, described as a “very huge sum” for young doctors.
In a written reply to Dewan Negara last month, Dzulkefly revealed a 43 per cent no-show rate among 764 contract medical officers reporting for duty for permanent placements in Sarawak last year as of November.
It’s unclear why the Public Service Department (JPA) or MOF did not give approval for the transfer allowance back in 2024 during planning for Budget 2025, but only months after the doctors who chose to report for duty in October 2025 had already transferred to Sabah or Sarawak. Permanent placements were actually initially scheduled for June 2025, but got delayed due to technical problems with the ePlacement system.
Over the past year, doctors and pharmacists in the national health service faced a major blow from cuts to their Regional Incentive Payment (BIW) allowance for postings to Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan.
Officers newly appointed from December 2024 received a fixed BIW rate of RM360 monthly, whereas the BIW allowance for existing officers was frozen at the last drawn amount before the Public Service Remuneration System (SSPA) came into effect. Previously, BIW was a progressive allowance set at a percentage of one’s basic salary.
In his op-ed for The Edge, Dzulkefly announced that the MOH would be deploying an Integrated Human Resource (HR) Dashboard to make “granular, data-driven decisions on staffing” to address workforce maldistribution.
“We are also upgrading the ‘Suka Sama Suka’ (P3S) transfer system — which already has nearly 3,000 registrants — with a ‘Rule-Based Algorithm’ to replace ad-hoc decisions with a fair, transparent mechanism for staff mobility.”
The health minister added that a modern health care system required a resilient workforce.
“Over the last 24 months, we have moved decisively to stabilise our human capital, resolving legacy grievances that have long plagued the profession.”
