KUCHING, Aug 21 — The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) is calling upon the Ministry of Health (MoH) to provide clear selection criteria for permanent posts for doctors.
It was announced on Aug 16 this year that a total of 3,215 contract doctors were given permanent positions in the MoH, and that number was from more than 8,000 doctors who had applied for these positions.
“Without knowing the selection criteria, many feel that they will be short changed when they apply for the permanent positions. Thus, MMA calls for the selection criteria to be made public,” said MMA president Dr Koh Kar Chai in a statement yesterday.
“We understand that not all the applicants would be accepted as the initial offer was for only 3,586 positions this year. Though we know that any offer of a permanent position would ultimately be based on the report transpiring from the interview itself, notwithstanding any additional educational or professional qualifications that the candidate might have, it would be good to have a set of selection criteria to be made known to the contract doctors.
“From the results of the selection process, we noted that among those rejected were some who had made the effort to go for parallel pathway programmes, and had excelled in their work.
“This resulted in dejection among these contract doctors, but they had been informed that they would be offered a chance to reapply next year,” said Dr Koh. — Borneo Post
