Education

Unscheduled medical graduates say “No”

By Kit

December 25, 2008

Letters

YB Datuk Liow Tiong Lai, Minister Of Health, Putrajaya, Malaysia 24 December 2008

Dear Respected YB Datuk Liow Tiong Lai,

Re : Oppose to 18 months Credit Transfer Programme into Local Government Universities For Unscheduled Medical Graduates

With reference to the above mentioned subject, we would like to bring to your kind attention that we the majority unscheduled medical graduates opposed to the idea of 18 months Credit Transfer programme.

2. We came to know that a meeting on 16 December 2008 with yourself to discuss about the problems faced by our students to do a credit transfer (such as unable to get a university admission, too expensive to transfer etc).So after we organized an urgent meeting with many of our fellow friends, we have decided not to attend this meeting as from the first we had said we are unable to accept a credit transfer and opposed it. We had spent many years with our own money for our studies and still ending up jobless and our parents are still paying for our loans to study before.

3. We can tell you for sure that only a handful of this (250 or more) graduates are able to do such transfer as maybe they are financially stable or its on their own will (which we will not stop them as its their own rights) but we ( the remaining 220 graduates and more ) who are poor, oppressed and frustrated are not prepared for such transfer that is unacceptable.We also found that such credit transfer is welcomed by some people/agents for their own personal interest.We still stick to our proposal for all the Unrecognised Graduates (almost the same proposal made by former Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng in 2002) that is to absorb immediately all the unrecognised Graduates into the government service as housemanship without the qualifying examination under the supervision of Consultants, Specialists or Senior Doctors and till such proposal is accepted, the problem of Unrecognised Graduates will still remain and the problem will not been solved.

4. We also regret that even this proposal was put to youself by many of our friends before, you still choose to ignore it.The Prime Minister had been so hardworking to overcome the unemployment issue in Malaysia and we hope he would see on our plight and we feel if our proposal is not met, the case of Unrecognised Professionals unemployed will be a main issue soon. So we humbly request to yourself to reconsider our proposal and please we can’t accept the idea of Credit Transfer to a local Government universities at this moment even if the dateline for such transfer is prolonged, PTPTN loans arranged or the duration of 1 1/2years reduced as its unacceptable for us as we had already went through many years as jobless, many years in medical schools.many frustrations and it will be more time and energy wasted doing this transfer. Why can’t the Government take us and train us during the government service please?

5. We apologise if we had said anything wrong here and hope yourself will sincerely try to help and solve this matter as this is a National issue which need an immediate action,Thank You Datuk.

Yours Truly,

Dr.Kartik and Dr.Chia, (Unscheduled Medical Graduates)

ccYAB Perdana Menteri Malaysia YAB Timbalan Perdana Menteri Malaysia Malaysian Medical Council