KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 — Deputy Health Minister Hanifah Hajar Taib has forecast a whopping 50 per cent no-show rate among medical officers offered permanent positions in Sabah this year.
Hanifah told a Dewan Rakyat Special Chamber session yesterday that for last month’s intake with a June 29 reporting date, 39 medical officers were posted to Sabah, but only 20 reported for duty whereas 19 rejected their offers for permanent positions.
Under the first phase of a nationwide exercise for permanent appointments of 4,500 medical officers this year, 328 in total were offered permanent positions in the June intake. Hanifah didn’t specify the nationwide no-show rate, aside from Sabah.
Under the second phase with October scheduled for reporting for duty, another 4,172 medical officers will be offered permanent positions.
“As a whole, this year, 560 officers will be offered permanent positions and posted to Sabah. Assuming that the acceptance rate is 50 per cent, it is expected that 280 people will accept placements in Sabah,” Hanifah told Kinabatangan MP Mohd Kurniawan Naim Moktar.
“This will help plug the gap of 256 officers like what I mentioned just now.”
The deputy health minister said Sabah currently has 2,803 medical officer positions, of which 1,863 (66.5 per cent) are filled, 366 (13.1 per cent) are on study leave, and 570 (20.3 per cent) are vacant.
“A total of 680 contract doctors were deployed to Sabah, but it’s still insufficient because there is a need for 256 medical officers.”
She added that from last June 22, contract medical officers who reported for duty in a new placement were eligible to claim for transfers, including food, accommodation, travel, and cargo transport.
Hanifah also said housemen, medical officers, and specialist doctors posted to Sabah were eligible to receive the Regional Incentive Allowance (BIW) at RM830 to RM1,300 a month.
Hanifah’s projection of a 50 per cent no-show rate among medical officers offered permanent positions in Sabah this year – after this occurred in the June intake – marks a 10-point increase from 40 per cent of medical officers nationwide who didn’t report for duty for permanent posts in 2025.
Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad told the Dewan Negara last March that the highest attrition rate occurred when doctors transitioned from contract to permanent positions.
The 40 per cent nationwide no-show rate last year was close to the 43 per cent seen in Sarawak.
This means that if this year’s nationwide no-show rate is similar to the 49 per cent recorded in Sabah in June, only half or some 2,250 medical officers may end up reporting for duty out of 4,500 offers.
In 2023, medical officers’ no-show rate for permanent positions nationwide was reported at 20 per cent, an 18-point jump from 2 per cent in 2022. Data for 2024 isn’t publicly available.
In other words, the percentage of no-shows spiked from 2 per cent in 2022 to a forecast 50 per cent in 2026.
The reasons for such a significant and continuous increase of doctors not reporting for duty for permanent positions – which occurred under the Madani government under Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa and her successor, Dzulkefly – were not immediately clear.
Dzulkefly recently announced the end of the “contract doctors’ era” by 2028, saying the MOH aimed to offer permanent positions to all housemen upon completion of their training in two years’ time.
He announced that 4,500 contract medical officers would be absorbed into permanent positions this year, but didn’t mention how many of the 328 offered permanent positions in the June intake had rejected their offers or failed to report for duty.
The health minister even claimed that the MOH was “on track” to filling more than 18,000 vacancies across all its service schemes this year, despite the near 50 per cent no-show rate recorded in Sabah in June and his deputy’s forecast for the same in the state overall this year.
According to Public Service Department (JPA) data presented in Parliament in February 2025, vacancy rates across the MOH began rising from 9 per cent in 2022 to 17 per cent in 2024.
As of December 31, 2024, the vacancy rates for medical officers and nurses stood at 25 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
