Press Release
May 6, 2007

To stop their exodus, physicians should
be paid more than politicians - Recto

To stop the exodus of government doctors to foreign lands, physicians should be paid more than politicians, Sen. Ralph Recto said, a principle President Arroyo can incorporate in the government sector wage hike bill she had vowed to send to Congress in July, he added.

By latest count, there are only 4,292 doctors in the official roster of national government employees, or one for every 20,736 Filipinos.

The count does, however, include physicians employed by local governments. But assuming that LGUs employ the same number of doctors, the resulting doctor-to-person ratio of 1: 10,000 is far from good, Recto said .

Pay is one factor why government doctors are packing up their bags in droves, joining the 3,500 who left for good from 2001 to 2004, Recto explained.

After spending millions of pesos in schooling and training, a doctor joining the civil service will be assigned an entry-level Medical Officer I position with a basic pay of P12,546 a month. Those who, on the other hand, will serve as Rural Health Physicians in towns will have to live with a starting pay of P20,823 a month.

Half of the doctors in the national government are holding Medical Officer III positions, an item that entitles one to a basic pay of P15,841 a month.

Although some allowances are added, the pay does not compare with what Filipino nurses in England or in other foreign countries where the Filipino medical Diaspora has reached are getting .

The hemorrhage of Filipino medical talent will continue for as long the lure of good pay abroad and nil career prospects at home conspire in triggering this migration, Recto said.

One way of plugging this, he said, is to make the pay of government doctors at par with what politicians are getting . This is a case of the law of supply and demand. We should pay more for people whose skills are in short supply, he said.

He said putting government doctors pay on the same level as congressmen and senators or governors is the right thing to be done.

Members of Congress have a basic monthly pay of between P40,425 and P48, 052.

To avoid salary distortions in the government pay hierarchy, however, what can be done is to increase the basic pay of doctors to say P30,000, then add some allowances, so the resulting take home pay will approximate the basic pay of a congressman, Recto said.

Recto said the additional allowance will only be given to government doctors doing clinical or hospital duty.

President Arroyo had said she will send a bill, dubbed as Salary Standardization Law III, which will raise government pay and revamp government pay scale, to the new Congress that will convene in July.

Recto noted that while many doctors slots in rural health clinics and hospitals remain vacant the same cannot be said in the case of elective posts where 80,000 candidates vie for 17,899 national and local positions up for grabs.

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