KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) is all for the reduction in students entering medical faculties in institutes of higher learning this year.

Its president Krishna Kumar said, “There are too many doctors with no jobs and we fully agree with the cutback.”

Kumar also said that since the current minister of health is a doctor, he fully understood the need to reduce the intake of students.

“It is better to make the cut now than having too many doctors in five years with nowhere to go,” he said.

However DAP MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok is of a different opinion.

Teresa, along with parents and students want the government to explain why the reluctance to enrol more students for medicine.

Saying the government was not being completely transparent, Teresa also asked why no advance notice was given that such a drastic cut was to take effect.

She said, ”On March 17 this year, I asked a parliamentary question on the government’s plans to address the issue of the oversupply of doctors following concerns raised by the Malaysian Medical Association.”

”Health Minister Datuk Subramanian listed a few steps, including the imposition of moratorium on new medical courses by institutions of higher learning, but he did not mention at all the reduction of medical places in public universities,” she added.

She said the Education and Health Ministers owed an answer to the affected students and their parents as to why a cutback had been instituted.

”Is it fair that the government carry out such a drastic reduction for medical courses at public schools if private medical schools are not ordered to do so? Or have instructions been sent out to private medical schools?”

”Other than the existence of too many medical schools, is it not the government’s failure to build more hospitals, a key reason why there is the issue of oversupply of doctors?”

This year’s public university intake for medical programmes will see a reduction of more than half compared to te 2011.

According to Deputy Education Minister P Kamalanathan, this was done to restrict the number of medical graduates and to avoid a flood of new doctors.

Source: Free Malaysia Today