Overtime Rates for Doctors get a huge boost!

Doctors in Malaysia are further in luck.

Overtime rates for doctors would be RM80 an hour from the usual RM30 while for the elective surgery component, the specialists will receive RM200 hourly and medical officers will be paid RM80 per hour.

This is definitely another boost for them.

This new incentive was prepared during Datuk Seri Chua Soi Lek's tenure and is brought up to cabinet by YB Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting. And it has been given green light.

Hopefully, with all these incentives for doctors, we would be able to look forward to see more capable and senior doctors stay on in government service to serve the public.

For more info, go to The Star .

Full quotations of the articles:-
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Medical officers to get incentive to work overtime

By AUDREY EDWARDS

PUTRAJAYA: Monetary goodies will be given to medical officers as an incentive for working overtime at health clinics selected to operate after normal hours to ease the overcrowding of patients at hospitals.

The Health Ministry will also provide benefits to medical specialists and officers who will now have to perform elective surgeries on Saturdays at 19 hospitals from 8am to 1pm to ease the backlog of cases.

Its director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican said the rates for the doctors would be RM80 an hour from the usual RM30 while for the elective surgery component, the specialists will receive RM200 hourly and medical officers will be paid RM80 per hour.

The annual allocation from the Government is RM12.31mil and RM6.9mil for both components.

Both ideas had been discussed during former Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek's tenure and now acting Health Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting has brought the issue to Cabinet for approval.

"There have been complaints of patients coming after office hours and crowding the emergency services. A lot of people are not happy," he told reporters on Wednesday.

"We heard of emergency cases not being seen. They were seeing only those with coughs and colds. We cannot send them away. So, now we open up clinics, instead of them thronging the hospital; and get doctors to work after office hours."

He added the move would also lessen the waiting time of patients.

He said it was hoped the decision would enable the people to obtain health services quickly and easily after office hours and lessen the burden on emergency units at hospitals so staff would be able to concentrate and provide more efficient services to critical and emergency patients.

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Tan Sri Sidek Hassan

I have to say that I am admired by what Tan Sri Sidek Hassan, Chief Secretary of Malaysia has done. He has definitely led by example and he has definitely delivered constantly to perform at a very high level.

Tan Sri Sidek, since being appointed to the top position of Civil Service, has taken to the task to transform our civil service. He has another 18 months to go, and he has been taking very serious steps to stem the problems of civil service. Many of those little napoleons have felt the heat from him, and he has no issue in publicly ticking those civil servants who fail to perform, and he would also provide fast promotions for those civil servants who perform well.

Tan Sri Sidek gave his email address to Malaysian public, to email him with any question/feedback/comment/idea. His email is sidek@pmo.gov.my . I have heard from several people who have emailed him with feedback and sometimes problems to solve, and he has always gotten those problems that often solved in months/years to be solved within a couple of days. He even responded to emails on Sunday.

I have heard him talk recently in a MIT Club of Malaysia Dinner Talk and I would say that it is very impressive.

Below is an article published in MCA website. You can click here to read.

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The article reproduced in full is as follow:-


Lifelines cut – declared the headlines of The Sun on 12 Dec 07. Little Napoleans, long the bane of the civil service, now have cause for concern.


Their days as civil masters look coming to a halt as the Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan has taken a firm stand in nipping the Little Napoleans at the bud.


While it has been commonly known that in the civil service, enbassies and even in the private sector, the “bawah kaki” can wield considerable power influence above their superiors, this is the first time that a government officer has openly voiced his displeasure with an earnest conviction, vowing to arrest this problems. “You think I don’t know in MPAJ, the clerks, the directors and the deputy directors are more powerful than the president? You think I won’t be telling them that after this that I will pull them out if they don’t change? I am very firm with this.”


It’s about time someone hammered the nail into the wall. Often time, underlings in government departments especially in state governments and local authorities wield so much power in that before any message or proposal reaches their bosses, or messages or directives from the superiors reaches the recipient, in between such instructions would either delayed, or not relayed for reasons known only to the messenger. In another vein, such Little Napoleans may even introduce slanted guidelines or policies which would serve to benefit a particular community or worse still, monopoly by a specific commercial entity at the expense of free and fair competition, especially where procurement of supplies and services are concerned. Unfortunately, such ugly practices breeds corruption, power abuse or self enrichment with no iota of public accountability or transparency at all.


We wish the highest ranking civil servant all the best in his endeavours. It is a daunting task, which may even shake people’s lucrative rice bowls, but someone has to rock the boat, if one really intends to see improvements, reforms and productive results in the civil service. The highest ranking government servant has also given his email, sidek@pmo.gov.my for contractors who failed to received their payments to lodge complaints with him. Sidek may even encounter subtle rebellion from within, but may he persevere and be resolute in carrying out his tasks to see an enhanced public delivery system.


In seeking to improve the public delivery system, the public ought not to dismiss the entire civil service as wanting owing to the behaviour of a few rotten apples. We should not lose sight of the improvements that have already taken place.


For example, this year, all government departments at the federal and state levels were instructed to ensure that payments to staff and service be reduced from 30 to 14 working days. This is one huge plus point for the civil service. Compared to the private sectors, while many commercial entities give out 30 credit terms, such a problem of poor paymasters or “besok-lusa” (tomorrow-day after) syndrome does lurk, whereupon the creditor would have to write off such debts as “bad debtors” in their accounts ledger, or if they can afford the time and inconvenience, commence legal action against such debtors.


With the initiation of the Special Task Force to Facilitate Business (Pemudah), a noticeable difference for the better in the public delivery system is in place.


The New Straits Times on 28 Nov 07 reported that in October 2007, state level offices were able to close 41,655 invoices amounting to RM 611.9 million within the revised payment time. In the same period, 93.6% of invoices amounting to RM 3.6 billion met the 14-day deadline in all 28 ministries while 62.3% were able to pay invoices within seven days. The Prime Minister’s Department closed 36,453 invoices amounting to RM 483.6 million in the say period, with 75.9% of the amount paid within seven days.


Take a walk to the Immigration office, having to wait one-month when applying or renewing one’s international passport is a thing of the bygone era. It takes only 3 hours at the most to complete apply or renewing one’s international passport at the self-help passport reader machine.


Refunds for overpaid income taxes would now take between 14 to 30 days opposed to one year previously.


Within the Companies Commission of Malaysia, registration of new business can be completed within 1 hour, while renewal of business licensing would take a mere 15 minutes unlike 1 day as before.


Factory owners will be pleased with the Business Licensing Electronic Support Services (BLESS) as approval for a manufacturing license has been trimmed to 23 days, compared to 40~50 days earlier on.


Senior citizens and disabled folks no longer have to wait in long queues to be attended to at government departments as there are special counters specially reserved to assist them.

- MCA Online -

Bakri Musa's Aligning Private Aspirations with Public Good

Obtaining this article of Bakri Musa from a mailing list. I would say that the following article is definitely interesting, especially on various ways he brought up in paragraphs 13-15. Start counting the paragraphs, or better still, read the articles.

Several points brought up, like giving scholarships to Malaysians who manage to get into elite universities, without restricting on courses of study, is definitely a fantastic suggestion. Besides that, the suggestion to provide preferential treatment to companies that reflect the racial structure of Malaysia is interesting. I doubt on whether this could be efficiently operated though, although it seems an interesting and fantastic concept.

Do enjoy reading
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Aligning Private Aspirations with Public Good

M. Bakri Musa

Bravo to Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar Mohamad Hasan! In awarding RM25,000 to each first-class honors graduate of local public universities, he clearly demonstrated where the priorities should be. He went further and forgave the students’ loans if they were given by his state agency.

To put that cost in perspective, at a total of about RM300,000 it is less than the inflated cost of one corrupt school laboratory construction project. Yet the benefit far exceeds that of any school computer lab, even if it were well built. As a bonus, unlike a poorly built building, this award program poses no danger to anyone.

Malay leaders, especially those in UMNO, continually lament on the generally backward status of our people despite decades of ever increasingly generous preferential treatment. Unfortunately that is all they are capable of doing – lamenting. Occasionally a bright leader might emerge who in a show of bravado would chastise and upbraid us by degrading our cultural heritage and questioning our biological endowment.

Only very rarely would a leader like Mohamad Hasan do something right, like having an appropriate mechanism in place and aligning the incentive system that would encourage the development of those qualities that we desire in our people. My complimenting Hasan would I hope encourage other leaders to follow his fine example.

Mechanism Design Theory

It is instructive that this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to three economists whose collective intellectual contributions under the rubric of “Mechanism Design Theory” help us understand better the real world in which we humans interact. Their insights could help us create our own institutions that would encourage the development of desirable behaviors and traits in our people by realigning our private and public incentives accordingly.

To purist disciples of Adam Smith, the open marketplace, guided only by the omnipresent “invisible hand” that would smack those who make the wrong decisions and pat those who had the right ones, is the best mechanism to ensure this. However we all know that competition – and thus the marketplace – is hardly ever “pure.” Unrestrained, the human tendency is to collude and conspire. Unrestrained “pure” capitalism would produce only conscienceless capitalists of Dickens’s era. We still see those characters today, in such places as China, resulting in millions of children being poisoned by their cheap but dangerous toys.

Malaysia too, under its “world’s happiest Prime Minister” Tunku Abdul Rahman, was enamored with unrestrained free enterprise, at least as understood by him. The result was disastrous, and no sane Malaysian would want a repeat of the May 1969 tragedy.

To economists of that era, like the eminent Ungku Aziz, the problem of poverty, specifically Malay poverty, would be solved if only we could remove the stranglehold of the monopolists and monopsonists. Broke them we did, with Pernas, Petronas, and other ‘Nases in the form of the various government-linked corporations. We also legitimized the “natural monopolies” in providing essential public services like utilities.

Unfortunately, those monopolists, whether state-sponsored or guided by individual greed, behave essentially in the same manner. Meaning, the public is ill served by them. It turned out that nothing improves service as much as competition. This applies to air travel as well as healthcare. Witness the improvement in air travel with the approval of Air Asia to compete with government-owned Malaysia Airlines. The healthcare of Malaysians is also much better served with the presence of a vibrant profit-making private sector.

Preference Falsification

Mechanism design theorists recognize the world as it is and take humans as we are. That is, we are neither saints nor satans and that we respond to incentives in what we believe to be in our best self interests, our public declarations notwithstanding. What we consider as incentives however may vary. To capitalists, interest income is a powerful incentive to save; to devout Muslims, an invitation to a life of sin and thus a definite disincentive!

A more monumental problem is that what we profess publicly may at times be at variance to what we believe or want privately, a phenomenon economist Timur Kuran refers to in his book, Private Truths, Public Lies, as “preference falsification.” This is the greatest barrier to formulating sound public policy.

The insight of mechanism design theory is in implicitly recognizing this and designing institutions that would best align public and private goals. This could be reconciling the seller wanting to maximize his profit and the buyer demanding the cheapest product; to universities upholding meritocracy and admitting only “top” students over the demands of influential alumni in “legacy” admissions favoring their children. On a broader public order, it could be the government wanting the greatest revenue from its broadwave spectrum to making sure that the public is well served.

In my book An Education System Worthy of Malaysia, I suggest ways how we could encourage excellence among our students by guaranteeing them scholarships when they manage to secure admissions to elite universities of the world. Not only that, we would give them the freedom to choose whatever field of study they wish in order to pursue their dreams. They and Malaysia would benefit from such a policy, a congruence of public policy and private aspiration.

In a later book, Towards A Competitive Malaysia, I suggested that public contracts be preferentially awarded to companies whose work force reflects the greater Malaysian society regardless whether the company is foreign or locally owned. It matters not whether the company is a subsidiary of Temasek or Guandong State Development Corporation, if its workforce reflects the greater Malaysian society, which in a practical sense means enough Malays at all levels, it would get preferential treatment.

This would align the public goals of attracting foreign investments, getting the best contractors, and integrating the private sector work force with the private one of encouraging Malays to pursue practical subjects so as to make them employable. We thus effectively align incentives such that private gains are compatible with the pubic good, or to use the language of the mechanism design theory, “incentive compatibility.”

Locally, our leaders may want to groom “glokal” Malays, but they unhesitatingly “protect” their children and even in-laws, a clash of stated public goals with individual’s private agenda! By rewardingly generously those who excel scholastically, Mohamad Hasan is attempting to reconcile public policy with private aspirations by designing his own mechanism or institution albeit on a very tiny scale.

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This article is by Bakri Musa and it does not represent my opinion, or whether my agreement/disagreement with what was brought up.