Only some may be doctors

ARCHIVES 2012

By admin-s On Apr 10, 2012

I recall a few years back, when a minister went to Ukraine to visit Malaysian medical students there, he remarked insensitively that there were ‘too many blacks’ (words to that effect). Coincidentally, after that, the MMC recognition of degrees from that medical course was withdrawn, but only AFTER a certain year.

KTemoc Konsiders

Free Malaysia Today – Liow: Medical council not biased

Last month, a former medical student from Ukraine alleged that students doing medical courses in Baltic countries (you know who) were compelled to do a foundation course while those going to Egypt and Jordan (you know who) were exempted.

Liow Tiong LIE repudiated that.

Why only AFTER a certain year? The general suspicion was that it was to enable ‘some’ students to graduate as doctors while denying the ‘many blacks’ recognition of their medical degree. The ‘wrong coloured’ people went to that State Medical College principally because they assessed from the participation of Malaysian government sponsored students that the degrees would be recognized by the MMC.

In a March 2006 post Mediocrity beats Meritocracy I penned:

The Higher Education Minister said: “For students who meet the requirements and are outstanding, their places at IPTAs are guaranteed but probably not in certain courses like medicine because the competition is intense for these courses.

He didn’t explain why outstanding students cannot be guaranteed a place in medicine if they apply for the medical course. Instead, he wants them to consider other courses that were less popular

What he meant was the numbers for the medical intake would be limited and perhaps even taken up already, and therefore those outstanding students shouldn’t be surprised or upset if they aren’t accepted

From all these injustices, ordinary rakyat like us couldn’t help but gather that the authority has consistently and deliberately made it difficult for ‘some’ Malaysians to get a medical degree – non-medical degree okay lah but medical degrees tak sokong atau ta’boleh.

I also wrote in that post:

Those students by their academic achievements should have been more than qualified for, and would be accepted in, any medical courses of foreign universities – assuming they have the money or scholarship to go there, especially since the Crimean State College for Medicine was mysterious ‘blacked’ out (I mean ‘blocked’ out) for them.

The people responsible for the entry selections keep changing their criteria each year after being challenged. Following the brouhaha in the last two years, where the PM himself had to intervene, they have now included some subjective criteria, making it even more difficult to detect the unfairness.