The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) fully supports Health director-general Dr Mahathar Abd Wahab and his assessment of what is wrong with Malaysia’s health care workforce pipeline.
What he has described is not new to those of us on the ground. But hearing it stated plainly by the DG himself — the head of the entire MOH workforce — carries a weight that cannot be ignored.
We want to be clear about who the DG is and what he carries. Dr Mahathar is not only responsible for doctors. As director-general, he is the head of the entire Ministry of Health (MOH) workforce — doctors, nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals, support staff — the full spectrum of people who keep Malaysia’s public health care system running every single day.
When he says the pipeline is broken, he is speaking on behalf of all of them. That is the scale of what is at stake.
Three Agencies, Three Silos, Nobody In Charge Of The Whole
What the DG has described is a workforce pipeline that is fragmented from start to finish. The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) determines how many medical students are admitted — but with no binding link to actual workforce needs.
The Public Service Department (JPA) controls recruitment, remuneration and posts — but with limits on permanent appointments that mean graduates cannot be absorbed even when vacancies exist.
And MOH, which is supposed to deliver the service, is left dealing with registration processes that can take months — leaving qualified doctors waiting while hospitals run short.
These are not independent problems. They are three parts of the same broken chain. A student is trained by MOHE, hired through JPA and deployed by MOH — three different agencies with three different priorities, none of them fully accountable for the end result.
And the end result is what we see today — facilities facing shortages despite having enough registered professionals on paper. As the DG said himself, numbers alone do not tell the full story. What matters is whether the right people are in the right place at the right time. Right now, they are not.
Understaffed Wards, Overworked Doctors, Patients Waiting: A Collective Failure
When patients wait hours in an emergency department, when surgeries are delayed, when a single nurse is stretched across more beds than is safe — the frustration is directed at the hospital. At MOH. At the health minister. That is understandable. But it is misplaced.
MOH did not decide how many medical students MOHE admits each year. MOH did not set the limit on permanent posts that JPA controls. MOH did not determine the budget that the Ministry of Finance (MOF) allocates.
MOH is the operator. It runs the hospitals, manages the clinics and delivers the care. But it has no control over the supply of the people it needs to do that job, and no control over the funds required to sustain it.
Blaming MOH for overcrowded wards and delayed treatment is like blaming a factory floor supervisor for a production failure when the machinery was never maintained and the workers were never hired. The supervisor did not make those decisions. Someone above him did.
The understaffing, the overwork, the waiting times and the delayed treatments that Malaysians experience today are the accumulated consequence of decisions — and indecisions — made across multiple agencies over many years. It is a collective government failure.
And it must be owned collectively — by MOHE, by JPA, by MOF, and by the leadership that sits above all of them. MOH has been carrying this alone for far too long.
The DG’s Hands Are Tied, And He Has Said So Respectfully
MMA notes that the DG’s proposal for an independent National Health Workforce Governing Committee — to finally bring these agencies into alignment — remains, in the words of his own office, “under consideration.” It requires “further engagement with central agencies.”
We understand why the DG must be measured in how he says this. He operates within a system and he respects that.
But MMA does not have to be measured. What “further engagement with central agencies” means in plain language is this — the DG has identified the problem, proposed the solution and is now waiting for the agencies above him to agree to give up some of their control over a pipeline they have collectively mismanaged for years.
That is the conundrum. And it will remain a conundrum until someone with the authority over all three agencies makes a decision.
MMA wants to be equally clear on something else. The DG raising this publicly is not insubordination. It is not a breach of hierarchy. It is the head of the nation’s health care workforce doing exactly what his role demands — speaking truth about a systemic failure that is directly affecting the people this system is meant to serve. He deserves support for that, not silence.
Only The Prime Minister Can Break This Deadlock
The Minister of Higher Education reports to the Prime Minister. The director-general of JPA reports to the Prime Minister. The Minister of Finance reports to the Prime Minister. Every agency holding a piece of this pipeline answers to one person.
The DG cannot instruct MOHE to align student intake to workforce needs. He cannot instruct JPA to release more permanent posts. He cannot instruct MOF to fund the positions that are needed. But the Prime Minister can. And that is exactly the level at which this decision must be made.
MMA calls on the Prime Minister to personally convene MOH, MOHE, JPA, and MOF around a single mandate — to build a seamless, end-to-end health care workforce pipeline that produces the right professionals, absorbs them without delay and retains them where they are needed most.
Not a study. Not a committee without teeth. A decision, with clear ownership, clear timelines and clear accountability.
This Is Urgent. Not Important — Urgent
Every month this remains unresolved, graduates are delayed entering service. Vacancies go unfilled. The workforce already there carries more than it should. And the patients at the end of this broken pipeline wait longer, receive less and deserve better.
The DG knows what needs to be done. He has said it publicly and professionally. MMA stands fully behind him. Now it is time for the political will to match the clarity of the problem.
Malaysia does not have a workforce shortage. Malaysia has a governance failure. And governance failures must be solved at the top.
This statement was issued by MMA president Dr R. Arasu.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
