LOYALTY doesn’t pay the bills.
Loyalty doesn’t make life better.
Loyalty doesn’t guarantee respect, effort or reciprocity. Sometimes, loyalty just teaches you how long people can take you for granted before you finally walk away.
Such definition of loyalty summed up how Malaysians are rallying behind 12 government specialist doctors who have been accused of abandoning their public duty by trading the nation’s trust and the poor’s welfare for an alleged “salary hike from RM30,000 to RM70,000” at Sunway Medical Centre (SMC) Ipoh.
This follows a Facebook post by English teacher-turned-digital content creator Teachr [sic] Nagen who lamented that the dozen surgeons were “selling service and loyalty for cash” without due concern for patients who can ill-afford specialist care at private hospitals.
It is learnt that the claim by Teachr Nagen has its origin in a recent talk by Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) chairman Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj who accused SMC of “poaching” doctors from government hospitals.
On this note, the once touted “giant slayer” for having unseated the late MIC great Tun S. Samy Vellu twice en route e a two-term Sungai Siput MP (2008-2018) stint stressed the need for Malaysia “to have a moratorium on the construction of new private hospitals before the public healthcare system collapses from within”.
This was when content creator with medical background from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Muhamad Na’im Ab Razak, sarcastically concurred that “the specialists are traitors “should just ride the EX5 motorbike to work so they can avoid paying tolls and need not even beg for government fuel subsidy”.
“Doctors shouldn’t dream of living a luxurious life. Enough of eating rice with soya sauce and fried ikan basung (mackerel scad which is deemed an affordable fish in Sabah),” jibed Na’im who is also a writer at DuBook Press.
Their phones need to be downgraded. Don’t buy an iPhone. Just use the China-made RM300 one. As for houses, just find a cheap housing flat.
Work-wise, they shouldn’t complain about the hustle and bustle at the Health Ministry’s (MOH) facilities. They should work non-stop, sacrifice time spent with their families and not be allowed to rest in order to be patriotic. Right?
This was when a medical and health officer at the Kuah Public Heath Clinic in Kuah, Langkawi echoed the sentiment raised by Na’im with the above definition of loyalty.
One netizen chastised the Madani government for its short-sightedness by in exacerbating the matter by “being bent on cutting the MOH budget again” as part of the global energy crisis belt tightening exercise across the public sector.
Another justified that this is not “100% salary per se but increased workload, unconducive work environment, feeling unappreciated and tonnes of other factors”.
One commenter took a swipe at the government of the day for “telling civil servants to be patriotic but those who are handsomely paid are politicians on both sides of the divide”.
Medical doctor Dr Justine Sim is cynical about “specialists who spent five years in medical school; another four to six years grinding through post-graduate training, countless 33-hour calls; managing dying patients at 3am and getting screamed at by administrators, patients and politicians” are now expected to reject better salaries out of “loyalty”
“Here’s a difficult truth: If 12 specialists are willing to leave together, the problem is not greed,” the Public Gold dealer ticked off Teachr Nagen.
The problem is a healthcare system so broken that even highly trained specialists no longer believe it will improve.
And instead of asking why doctors are fleeing, some people decided to attack the very people keeping the system alive all these years. Brilliant strategy. Truly world-class thinking.
Also trolling Teachr Nagen is self-proclaimed photographer Harvind Singh:
Don’t make accusation against medical doctors when you don’t know the extent of the problems, the sacrifices of those specialists in terms of working hours and most importantly their dedication that is NOT recognised by this #Malaysian government for decades with old policies‼️
Do not interfere into a field of study that REQUIRES more than what you could have as a teacher. – May 11, 2026
