KUALA LUMPUR – The Health Ministry welcomes any effort to improve national healthcare but will not interfere in a protest by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) students against calls to admit non-Bumiputera students to its cardiothoracic surgery postgraduate programme.
A source from the MoH has said UiTM has its own legislation governing it and the university is under the purview of the Higher Education Ministry.
“Generally speaking, (the ministry) welcomes any effort to boost its capacity building. This includes any medical school’s offering of specialty training.
“However, (the ministry) fully respects that this is their (UiTM’s) internal matter,” the source said when contacted by Scoop.
The MoH did not respond to a request for an official comment on the matter.
UiTM’s student representative council (MPP) has issued a statement urging students to protest against an appeal by the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) for UiTM to put public health interests first by temporarily opening the programme to non-Bumiputera, amid a shortage of specialists and surgeons in the field.
The student body is urging UiTM students to protest by using the #MahasiswaUiTMBantah hashtag on social media from May 14 until tomorrow, and to wear black tomorrow as a sign of protest against the “agenda” to open UiTM’s gates to non-Bumiputera.
MPP said all its 214 members firmly stood by UiTM’s founding objectives as an institution for Malays, Orang Asli and the Bumiputera of Sabah and Sarawak.
In MMA’s proposal, its president Dr Azizan Abdul Aziz highlighted remarks by UiTM’s Prof Dr Raja Amin Raja Mokhtar, who reportedly said he did not believe legislative amendments were needed to admit non-Bumiputera students into UiTM’s postgraduate programme.
Raja Amin is also on the board of studies of the UiTM-IJN cardiothoracic surgery postgraduate programme.
MMA said Malaysia was facing a shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons, with some people waiting six months to a year – and some dying while waiting – for a bypass surgery at public hospitals.
It added that Malaysia’s target of having 28,000 medical specialists by 2030 would unlikely be met. – May 15, 2024