KUALA LUMPUR, May 15 — Hartal Doktor Kontrak (HDK) has urged Putrajaya not to consider cutting health care workers’ salaries as part of a government-wide austerity drive.
The contract doctors’ group said it understood the government’s need to consider all fiscal contingencies, but felt it was unnecessary to discuss salary cuts at this point.
“We trust that PMX won’t resort to victimising health care workers, and instead propose ministry-wide cost-saving efforts that would streamline the budget and avoid unnecessary spending,” HDK told CodeBlue in a statement.
“Such remarks are premature, and we believe attention should instead be focused on measures that do not affect the morale or stability of the public service.”
Nurhisham Hussein, economic adviser to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, told BFM in a recent interview that cutting civil servants’ salaries would be an “absolute last resort” to pay for soaring fuel subsidies.
Although he didn’t specify which groups of civil servants would be targeted – if the government was ever forced to this “absolute last resort” – the Public Service Department (JPA) previously told the Health parliament special select committee that the medical scheme receives among the biggest salaries in the public service.
Officers in the administrative and diplomatic (PTD) scheme earn comparable salaries to the medical scheme, albeit fewer allowances than the 21 allowances and incentives that different groups of health care workers in the Ministry of Health (MOH) are entitled to.
There are many more doctors at about 46,000 in the MOH compared to 10,000 PTD officers in the civil service. Doctors, however, increasingly work 33-hour on-call shifts due to severe understaffing in the public health care system.
Jusa officers – or super-scale grades across the civil service, including the medical scheme – receive monthly remuneration of at least RM10,000 in salary and allowances combined.
Some Malaysians commenting on Nurhisham’s remarks said salary cuts shouldn’t even be on the table. A medical officer wrote on Facebook: “Just cut; I’ll pay all my loans with nationalism”.
