Jobless Doctors in Mauritius: Open Letter to the Minister of Health
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Letter to the Ministry of Health from a group of Jobless Doctors in Mauritius
It was no fun reading your supposedly response in the Monday morning issue of L’express. First of all, we wish to request to please stop fooling the Doctor population about your “sincere” desire to introduce the shift system. It is an utter lie. We have a recording whereby you have had a good laugh telling that this shift system will not be implemented, at least not in your lifetime, to one of your young relatives who came to request for his internship last year.
Now let’s come to the fact that you will have another intake. As per your usual self, you will have not given the exact time: April or May? Is that an answer to us, who are desperate for a job? What do we tell the banks with whom we have contracted debts to support our families? What guarantee do we have that we will even be appointed? Your words have no value, forget to the population of Mauritius, it appears they not in the Cabinet either. As usual you will keep us wait just to keep us hopefully quiet and so that we do not question your biased actions. You have just been abusing the rights conferred upon you by the Minister post. Are you afraid that it might be your last chance? Is that why you are only making sure all those close to you get established?
Our words may appear harsh. Yes, unfortunately, they are. They come directly from our wounded hearts, who have been unfairly treated because we do not have the “protective” hand over our heads.
If you will have another intake of about 100 more doctors in April-May, then please explain why you have not confirmed all those who work on a month-to-month basis, now, then, in next intake, appoint all those from the new batch of freshly registered doctors? Why have you overlooked the fact deliberately? We know that many of these newly registered doctors have high level backing. But it was not valid reason to overlook us, “ti dimoune”. With them joining duty yesterday, it only means that our career has been terminated by you, Mr Minister!
As Minister, we guess you should know how important seniority is for the doctors in relation to a senior post and even scholarships. Now we will never be able to compete against these batch mates.
Maybe we will be appointed in four years time by the PSC (though this may not even happen as we won’t be having backing at that time either), then we will be in the same batch as those 4 years younger than us, meaning age will be our disadvantage. So if you have understood the reason of our outcry, you will see all the injustice your actions have achieved.
And now, will wait for our appointment letter just to be informed that you will propose a month-to-month work basis and not a permanent job like those provided to our colleagues recently? We are sure that this is what is in line for us. We, who have had to wait for a year to get work, will have to accept whatever you throw to us. You did that with the SSR Medical students awaiting pre-reg training, and now, you will have the same plan for us. We, from low income families, couldn’t manage jobs in private clinics, while those you just appointed were already practicing at Apollo Bramwell, Clinique du Nord, Clinique Fortis Darne and even City Clinic. Is that fair? We will leave that to you.
We have tried whatever we could but to no avail. We can only hope that justice will prevail and that our society’s anti-corruption body will lighten the scene to help us.
A group of jobless doctors
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