Pakistan has become a huge market for Gulf countries looking to get doctors. PHOTO: FILE
The country is again set to lose a number of doctors, many of whom benefitted from millions of rupees in subsidies on their medical education, to more lucrative posts abroad.
Pakistan has become a huge market for Gulf countries looking to get doctors. A Saudi delegation is to conduct interviews for doctors in Lahore on August 31, in Multan on September 5 and in Islamabad on September 9.
An official with the consultants organising the interviews told The Express Tribune that he expected the Saudis to hire some 150 doctors in this year’s recruitment drive. “They never tell us exactly how many doctors they want, but they are expected to hire around 150 this time,” the official said.
The Saudis are looking for consultants, specialists and residents in general medicine, endocrinology, neonatology, general surgery, haematology, obstetrics and gynaecology, orthopaedics, paediatrics, neurosurgery, family medicine, intensive care, anaesthesia, nephrology, emergency medicine, radiology, dermatology, cardiology, urology, ophthalmology and dentistry.
“A doctor with two years of experience gets a salary of 6,000 Saudi riyal (Rs166,205) per month, while a consultant gets 20,000 riyal (Rs554,016) a month at least. Those with more experience get more,” the consultancy official said.
Motives
Dr Ahmad Asghar, who served as medical officer and consultant at Jinnah Hospital, is currently preparing to move into a new job in Saudi Arabia, where he will make 20,000 riyals a month.
Though his salary is to increase ten-fold from what he was making here as a consultant, Dr Asghar said that he was not moving for the extra money, but because he did not get what he felt was a due promotion to senior registrar.
“I was making Rs52,000 a month here and I was happy. But when I was transferred from Jinnah Hospital, where I was needed, for someone with just an MBBS degree, I decided to quit,” he said.
Dr Shahid Imran, who worked at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology and had College of Physicians and Surgeons fellowships in medicine and cardiology, quit eight months ago to take up a job in Qatar with a salary of 32,000 Qatari riyal (Rs911,000) per month.
Senior doctors have been leaving Pakistan too. Professor Mushtaq Haroon of King Edward Medical University (KEMU), author of two books on the MBBS curriculum, went on Ex-Pakistan leave to Saudi Arabia and then mailed in his resignation.
Long leave and vacancies
A representative of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) Punjab said that the exodus of doctors abroad was a major blow, as almost half of the specialist seats at district headquarters hospitals and 40 per cent at teaching hospitals were vacant.
“The gulf countries aren’t establishing any higher medical education institutions. They say they don’t need to as they can just ‘buy’ doctors from countries like Pakistan,” said Dr Amir Bandesha.
He also noted that the government spent a lot of money subsidising medical education and training. “The government spends Rs2.5 million on a student to make him a doctor and an additional Rs10 million to make him a consultant or specialist. During training, doctors are paid Rs44,000 per month, which comes to a total of Rs2.7 million per doctor,” said Dr Bandesha.
Dr Izhar Chaudhry of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) said that the Health Department’s decision to not allow government-employed doctors to go on leave abroad for periods longer than 10 days had pushed many doctors to quit. Previously, such doctors would have gone on leave to work abroad for a year or two and then returned to Pakistan.
“Many doctors have made up their mind to resign and go abroad after being denied ex-Pakistan leave,” said Dr Chaudhry. “The Health Department has made no policy to stop this brain-drain. Rather, it seems as if they are teasing government sector doctors to promote private colleges. The four new public medical colleges are still short of faculty. [Their] policies encourage doctors to go to countries like Saudi Arabia,” he said.
He added that many doctors were upset that the Health Department had not done all it had promised to do when it reached a deal with doctors’ associations last year for a new service structure to end a long-running doctors’ strike. “The Health Department announced that it would give an additional allowance to doctors who complete post-graduate degrees, but it still has not done so,” Dr Chaudhry said.
Health Secretary Hassan Iqbal defended the department’s decision to ban doctors from going abroad on long leave. Though these doctors were away, they still officially counted as Health Department employees and so the department could not hire replacements, he said. “This way we were not able to recruit anyone else in their place. By reviewing the policy we have avoided this problem,” he added.
Iqbal acknowledged that the government lost millions of rupees in wasted investments whenever a doctor trained locally decided to move abroad, but they could not be prevented from resigning, especially when much higher salaries were on offer. “We have many intelligent people and we constantly review our policies to see what we can do to retain them,” he said.
He added that the Health Department was implementing the service structure agreement step by step.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 29th, 2013.
COMMENTS (22)
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I am kind of surprised to see some comments here. Lets look at the big picture. Pakistan government spends millions in preparing the doctors in its medical colleges to benefit the people of Pakistan. These doctors when ready, go to the other countries, and mind that countries like SA will only take the best for its own so basically Pakistan is left with either fresh or not so "bright" doctors. How does it impact Pakistan? Big way. The experienced doctors are gone. The fresh doctors don't get chance to work with experienced ones and they don't learn the new tricks needed for the job leaving people with sub standard medical services and some people recommending this kind of brain drain for what, few dollars of remittance? Pakistan has a potential to become a mecca of medical tourism provided, peace in the country and a good infrastructure to support medical fraternity. Public private partnership is required to pump the money in building that infrastructure to enable those kind of services. I am sure the Pakistanis across the world would prefer to get the treatment in Pakistan rather spending hundred of thousands of dollar in US/Europe.
@Uza Syed: Well said agreed .would like to add further- Millions spent on doctors in Rs will be returned in Dollars that this country is in bad need of foreign exchange.
@Ahmad Shah
In Lahore at PC, In Islamabad, Marriot.
At which place Saudia Arabia are conducting job interviews for doctors 2013 specially lahore n islamabad....as soon as possible
@Rabbani: Since the government is unable to provide jobs and training facilities to fresh graduates, its better they move abroad. At the moment hundreds of doctors and dentists are jobless. Its better to employ them than to cry over doctors moving abroad.
@Gingo: Please go ahead and do it . Who is stopping you ? What are your qualifications? What kind of odd jobs you are thinking? Give me some examples? Thanks
Brain drain is better than being brain dead due to sectarian killings.
I'd rather do odd jobs in USA UK Canada than sell my soul to the devil i.e Saudi Arabia
The medical training is grinding in Pakistan unlike any other place whereas the reward is peanuts. My house-keeper & I earned the same during internship & despite being experienced now I'm the most low paid member of my family. It's shameful that people with BA or MA are earning far more & we need to do more than 2 jobs to run a family. No other profession demands as much dedication yet all we get is frustration. Plea to restraint law makers- don't make our lives miserable when we already have plenty of struggles to survive.
This is good news as far as I know. My cousin is a doctor in Lahore and he had a very hard time finding a job in Lahore. With salaries that are up to 8-10 times higher, exposure to state-of-the-art equipment and an opportunity to work with fellow doctors from around the world, this is VERY good! These doctors will represent Pakistan abroad as an educated class and send home much needed money. Most of them will return in some years and settle home permanently and even if they don't they are sure to send home money to family members and travel home regularly. What more can you ask for?
Most of the governing bodies have extremely negative roles. As in this case, PMA's restrictions not to allow long leave for proceeding abroad for employment. Similarly, PMDC and Institute of Chartered Accountants have step sons attitude towards doctors and accountants who qualify from abroad. This attitude is to create hurdles and not to facilitate. The country needs doctors, and accountants, whether they qualify from within the country or abroad, but our governing bodies' roles are extremely negative. Thousands doctors qualify each year but a limited number gets a chance to go abroad, so there should be no shorage of doctors. Lastly, our country is in dire need of foreign currency. If someone get chance to go abroad our Government should facilitate him/her. This will help the family of person going abroad as well as the country.
@Humza: actually if you go by statistics we do not really have an over supply but we are in dire shortage.the whole country has 150000 doctors for a population of 200000000. Moreover out of this many doctors many are being taken away. This creates two problems. First the numbers reduce second the number of senior doctors who could train junior ones are no longer there. This creates joblessness among the young as they cant be trained and the country suffers as it spends money on trained and untrained at the same time. And gets nothing out of them. So what the saudis are cleverly doing is that they are buying a trained product spent upon by pakistan without themselves having to spend anything on doctor training.
Its a good thing dude in the country of two hundred millions people there are so many more doctors gonna be in next five years who will looking for jobs and this way our country runs too
Government must have already passed an Act, where those doctors, whose medical studies were financed or subsidized by the government in anyway, should be made to work in public hospitals for a period not less than 5 years. As a way to keep them in check, confiscate their passports and other documentations for the said period. However, they must given an option to leave Pakistani early (to seek jobs abroad) by refunding back to the government atleast double the amount government had spent on their education and training.
Pakistan has an oversupply of medical doctors and Saudi Arabia needs them. So what is the problem? It is a win- win situation. No foreigner wishes to stay permanently in Saudi Arabia because of the harsh cultural norms there nor does Saudi Arabia grant foreigners resident status so in all likelihood most of these medical doctors will return to Pakistan after earning some foreign exchange and having an experience working in an environment with better equipment. I know every Pakistani city has several medical schools that keep pumping out so many doctors that can't find jobs so it's good that the global market has room for the large numbers of Pakistani doctors.
if this brain drain is stop than for sure the whole pakistan will be filing bankruptcy almost all companies .because lots of cash comes in every year from the brains which are drained. And the best part is that their children get good education and can be sent abroad for higher studies.its like a generation of highly qualified people is going to be there.And better for doctors in pakistan who are unemployed they will have a chance to get a job..
we should make as many docs as possible and send them out of country, use them as export items, just put some legal binding like they have to remit 20% of their salaries to pakistan each month, something like this and it will benefit our economy plus we will have empty vacancies for new upcoming docs.
First our doctors or for that matter any of our skilled and even unskilled workers are not anything that you "export or anyone can import" they are well trained human resources, they are our man power and there are more than one reason for us to look up to them with pride and affection. If anything we must be proud of them. Don't you think that we as Pakistanis are better represented and served by our such people who are capable and willing to go out and help the world to become a better world and win respect for themselves and honour for Pakistan and in the process earn a little more comfortable life for themselves. I would rather see my compatriots rendering such great service to the world as educated people like doctors, engineers, teachers, accountants and managers than be shamed by some of those among us who are brain washed and mislead into negative activities and bring miseries and sufferings to themselves and disrepute to Pakistan. Good luck to those of us who embark on this new venture. Go and do what best you can and do us all proud, Pakistan loves you all its children.
Not necessarily every doctor been spent upon by govt. The figures mentioned only apply on doctors that graduated from public medical colleges. What about others who spend millions off their parents to get there? Unless health dept improves doctors salaries, nobody going to stay here.
salaries you have mentioned is totally wrong. Doctor here in KSA are getting a lot more than this. even a fresh MBBS is getting minimum 9,000 Riyal.. and specialist getting 25K to 30k Riyals and Consultant at least 50k and max 100K riyals.
STOP CRYING PLEASE!!! well dont you think it is good for our doctors to work abroad and have international exposure?? and isnt it good that they will benefit our economy by remitting more money back home and our economic circle will start working in much better way. It is also good for our new breed of doctors so they can also get the chance to work in our hospitals and the unemployment would go down thank you
Health dept is right in limiting the time,where doctor could go abroad for one or two yrs and still would have the option to come back to his job. This is not fair to the next doctor in line. This is not done in the devolped world to best of my knowledge. Let the doctor use his vacation time. If he does not come back in a given period , say two month, then his job is automatically terminated. Period. There is no need to give any add in the paper or go thru any legal process . Keep the expense down. Bring the next doctor in line to that job. It is all supply and demand in the market. That is the way system should work. This is one of the major rule followed in USA.