DOCTORS at the Serdang Hospital have been told not to participate in tomorrow’s Hartal Doktor Kontrak strike.    

The police are also ready to arrest any healthcare workers who defy the order, The Malaysian Insight was told. 

A junior doctor attached to the Serdang Hospital, a Covid-19 hospital, said that police special branch and federal reserve unit personnel will be deployed to monitor the situation at the hospital tomorrow.

“My head of department is looking for anyone who will be joining the protest tomorrow. Doctors have been intimidated and warned not to join.
 
“We were told that the police will arrest anyone joining the protest with FRU ready to be dispatched,” said a permanent doctor at the hospital.

The doctor, who declined to be named, also revealed that Selangor Health Director Dr Sha’ri Ngadiman was the one who issued the arrest threat to doctors today.
 
“He came to Serdang Hospital and told us not to join and (that) the police are ready to detain us if we do so,” he added.

Earlier today, Umno vice-president Mohamed Khaled Nordin told Putrajaya to allow the Hartal Doktor Kontrak protest to go on tomorrow as a sign of respect for freedom of speech.

In a statement, Khaled also said that negotiations between doctors on strike and the government must be brought forward to find a solution.

Last week, in a move to stave off the strike, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced that the contract term for medical officers and dentists who have been accepted into specialist training will be extended to a maximum period of four years, whereas existing contract doctors will receive a contract extension of two years.

However, the Hartal Doktor Kontrak movement, which is pushing for permanent postings for contract medical officers, snubbed Putrajaya’s offer, calling it ‘half-baked’. 

The group said that it is proceeding with the walkout as planned, with some 4,000 to 5,000 doctors nationwide expected to take part in the strike, which is slated for tomorrow.

Claiming that there is no other choice, the group’s representative, Dr Umar Baraka, said doctors from Sungai Buloh hospital, one of the main treatment centres for Covid-19 patients, will be taking part in the strike.

Other hospitals that are also participating are Sultanah Bahiyah Hospital in Kedah, Taiping Hospital and Raja Permaisuri Bainun Hospital in Ipoh, as well as Hospital Sultanah Aminah and Hospital Sultan Ismail in Johor.
 
The strike will start with a walkout by junior doctors at 11am.
 
Today, a record-setting number of 17,045 new cases was reported, pushing Malaysia’s national caseload to 1,013,438.

Selangor accounted for the bulk of the cases with 8,500 infections. This is followed by Kuala Lumpur with 2,045 cases, and Kedah with 1,216 cases. 

The country reported 92 fatalities today, bringing the death toll to 7,994 cases.

Director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham told Sinar Harian today that Malaysia will reach the peak of Covid-19 transmission in mid-September with 24,000 cases a day.

He said that based on projections presented by the Ministry of Health, the infectious rate (RT) is set to be 1.2 by then.

He added that cases are projected to continue rising, with an expected toll of 17,000 cases daily by mid-August.

However, daily infections are likely to fall below 1,000 by October, he said. – July 25, 2021.