Private practice..

No, this is not the television show. Some of us were discussing about leaving the service. Some of us with deep family ties in Brunei may want to do private practice. Recently some private clinics were asking around for local doctors to work for them. We heard that this is the new Brunei Medical Board rule that private doctors should have some experience working in Brunei.
Although some of us may not agree with a lot of Brunei Medical Board rulings as we think that they are usually regarded as protecting the interests of the board members, but this one sounds reasonable. It will make private doctors more aware of the system in Brunei. On the plus side as well, there is an increase demand for local doctors in private clinics and therefore make us more marketable outside of the government. More opportunities for us to work in Brunei. Cheers.

Note: We will try to update on the scheme of service. Info is still lacking as we have not anything from our readers.

Update on scheme of service..

There has been a lot of discussion this morning about a briefing to another government agency regarding our proposals for scheme of service and allowances. We are still trying to get first hand information on what went on. So far, what we know are:

• Reluctant to approve the professional allowance
• On-call allowance amount questioned
• Scheme of service too ambitious

The briefing was almost another biased briefing on the medical proposal, as usual, due to a narrow minded admin, our friends in the health side was almost not represented apparently. This would have made us look disjointed and un-unified. We should all get together, medicine, health and dentists to improve our working conditions.

More details to follow once we find out more. Anyone with info please leave a comment or email us.

An Interview..

An excellent interview with one of the first local Brunei doctors. Very insightful. Things have changed from before and we probably shouldn’t complain too much. At least now we know where the M allowance came from. We hope to see more of these interviews. 

Click here for more info

Well past retirement

Sorry for the break, we were all suffering from writer’s block. A few posts were cancelled either due to lack of hard facts or just too plain personal. 

One of us went down to Belait last week and found an interesting fact. There is still a very old specialist expatriate working in Suri Seri Begawan. The issue of special treatment for non-locals cropped up again. A quick disclaimer here, we are not against expatriates working in Brunei, we welcome it in fact and some of our best colleagues are non-locals. 

The retirement age for civil servants is 55 years. As far as we know, this applies for non-locals as well and we heard recently that this JPA/SPA are not accepting renewal of contracts for those non-locals above 55 years. It is amazing that a paediatrician well past this age is still working in Brunei, as a specialist no less. Rumour is that she knows someone who appealed for her contract to be renewed. 

There are some more examples in bandar. We would not be so upset about if not for our worry if they are up to date on knowledge and they are driving other doctors out of the country by filling in the specialist positions.

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