KUALA LUMPUR, August 3 — An academic from Monash University Malaysia has suggested special retention and retirement benefits for health care workers in public service, on top of what other civil servants get.
Brig Gen Prof Dr Mohd Arshil Moideen (Rtd), head of Monash University Malaysia’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, opined that creating a standalone defined-benefit pension scheme exclusively for the Ministry of Health (MOH), as proposed by CodeBlue, faces immense legal and structural hurdles under Article 147 of the Federal Constitution and Public Service Department (JPA) frameworks.
“Rather than a traditional pension, a more viable and modern mechanism would be a tailored, high-value Contributory Permanent Scheme – Employees Provident Fund (EPF)-plus or enhanced defined-contribution model – combined with dedicated retention allowances, post-retirement health coverage guarantees, and specialised hazard/longevity benefits,” Dr Arshil told CodeBlue.
“This achieves the social safety net of a traditional pension without triggering broader inter-ministerial equity disputes across the civil service.”
The Madani government is currently fine-tuning a new retirement scheme for civil servants to curb a ballooning pension bill that is estimated to exceed RM46 billion by 2030.
Dr Arshil stressed, however, that a pension scheme or a robust retirement security framework wasn’t a silver bullet for attrition in the health service, particularly doctors and nurses.
He cited substantial income disparity between public and private sectors in Malaysia or international markets like Singapore and the Middle East.
“Mid-career specialists and senior nurses rarely leave public service solely due to immediate base salary; they leave due to workplace environment, severe call/shift fatigue, lack of clear career progression pathways, and administrative inertia.”
The academic also noted that pension functions as a “golden handcuff” primarily in one’s mid-to-late career stages, with 10 to 20 years in service, where the accrued value creates a high opportunity cost for leaving.
But for junior doctors and young nurses, an unseen benefit delayed by three decades holds less immediate retention weight than a manageable workload, safe working hours, fair pay, and swift postgraduate or specialisation opportunities.
“Pension/retirement security acts as an effective long-term stabiliser, but only if paired with immediate operational reforms, such as competitive on-call rates, protected study leave, flexible working arrangements, and adequate facility staffing levels,” said Dr Arshil.
Hidden Cost Of Constant Health Care Worker Attrition
Dr Arshil told Putrajaya not to view public health care expenditure strictly through a fiscal liability lens, stressing that health care isn’t a standard administrative overhead, but a “core pillar of national security and economic resilience”.
“The hidden cost of constant health care worker attrition – loss of institutional memory, constant training costs for replacement cohorts, reduced clinical efficiency, and increased medical error risk – far exceeds the line-item savings of cutting retirement benefits,” he said.
“An enhanced, health-specific retirement package is indeed a worthwhile strategic investment, provided it is designed as a hybrid, fiscally sustainable defined-contribution framework (e.g., enhanced government EPF contributions scaled with years of continuous MOH service, paired with lifelong public medical coverage for retirees and dependants).
“We should advocate for ‘Protection of Purpose, Modernisation of Mechanism’. Validate the need to give MOH personnel unique retention and retirement safeguards due to the public system’s heavy load, but frame the solution around a modern, sustainable health-worker-specific retention and retirement package, rather than demanding a return to an unsustainable legacy defined-benefit pension scheme.”
Kalivani Poongawanam, a nursing lecturer at Sunway University’s School of Nursing, said although a pension alone wouldn’t solve problems of lower salaries, heavy workloads and staff shortages, and limited career progression in the health service, it provided an important long-term financial incentive that many private employers might not offer.
“It encourages health care workers to view public service as a sustainable long-term career, rather than a temporary stepping stone,” Kalivani told CodeBlue.
“For many nurses, pension security can influence decisions to remain in government service, particularly after they have accumulated several years of service. However, retention would be further strengthened if combined with competitive allowances, improved staffing levels, flexible career pathways, better working conditions, and professional development opportunities.”
Senator: Pension Not Superior To EPF
Senator Dr RA Lingeshwaran dismissed public perception that a pension scheme was inherently superior to other retirement vehicles like EPF.
“Public sector employees who retire under the EPF scheme continue to enjoy the exact same health and social benefits as pensionable officers because EPF’s year-on-year dividend returns have consistently remained healthy at above 5 per cent, a compounding return that can theoretically match or even surpass traditional pension payouts over a career,” he told CodeBlue.
“Maybe to make certain schemes like the health care sector more attractive, the government can consider increasing their percentage of contribution from 13 per cent to 15 per cent.”
Dr Lingeshwaran also noted that most pensioners receive roughly 50 per cent of their last-drawn salary, forcing a lifestyle downgrade upon retirement, compared to EPF that provides a substantial lump-sum payout on retirement.
“If you choose to withdraw your EPF fund monthly, you will still enjoy the upside of compounding interest and retain your lifestyle as before you retire.”
He opined that a pension alone wouldn’t fix retention of nurses, dismissing claims that nurses join the public sector solely because of a pension guarantee.
“True financial and career remuneration must focus on increasing post-basic allowance, reviewing the current critical allowance system or introducing special retention bonus for nurses, and also review time-based promotion of 13 years for nurses to be on par with teachers.”
Malayan Nurses Union (MNU) president Noor Aini Abu Hashim, however, has called for pensions to be retained for the entire civil service, while introducing additional retirement benefits specifically for MOH staff.
She also suggested retention incentives for critical years of service (five, 10, and 15 years) for health workers.
Although the Madani government provided 15 per cent salary increments under the Public Service Remuneration System (SSPA) for all civil servants in the implementation group and management and professional (P&P) group, health workers specifically didn’t receive additional salary hikes or retention incentives.
Doctor and nursing workforces in the MOH have contracted over the past two three years, indicating that attrition rates exceeded the entry of new staff, even as health care demand has grown.
