There is a major problem occurring at our hospitals and healthcare centres with non-national doctors being given preference to work over citizens of T&T. There is no question that we need as many doctors as possible in our hospitals, but we cannot have our government employing non-nationals over locals. In the past we had a shortage of doctors but this has been filled by doctors from India, Cuba and Nigeria. Now that we have the required personnel, our local doctors cannot get jobs because the positions are already filled.
This is nothing short of madness. Especially when many of the doctors are former scholarship winners who are under contract with the government to serve their country. After six months of not being hired by the government, these doctors are free to leave for greener pastures in the US, UK and Canada and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars will have been wasted! Even those who have years in the service are being passed over for jobs for which they are well qualified.
We cannot ask the burdened taxpayers to pay for the education of so many doctors and not utilise them. Such is a gross and painful waste of human resources. The ministry needs to implement a policy immediately to ensure that our doctors can get jobs when we apply for them, and do not get passed over because positions are filled by non-nationals. It's only a matter of time before the problem spirals out of control and we suffer another brain drain of qualified professionals.
Minister Khan, as a doctor himself, would do well to give this matter the attention it deserves before the nation is left wondering why we have more Trinidadian doctors in the USA and the UK than at home.
Dr Vijay Ramoutar
Don Miguel Road