Leong Hong Sai claims recent graduates in medicine can only work in ‘food delivery’

Lawmaker Leong Hong Sai, linked with the Macau General Union of Neighborhood Associations (commonly referred to as Kai Fong), claimed yesterday at the Legislative Assembly (AL) that new medicine graduates can find no work in the local industry and being forced to change their career paths to work in the “take-away” [and food delivery] industry.

Such a statement was aired at the AL yesterday during the period before the agenda, in which Leong, well-known for his bold statements and partisan positions in the plenary, wanted to address the problem of the hiring of staff for the new Islands Hospital Complex, due to open soon.

“This time, the Islands Hospital will recruit only five general doctors and 50 nurses, which, according to some experts in the health sector, is very little. Therefore, they hope that in the next phase of recruitment there will be more vacancies for qualified residents to have opportunities to develop and contribute to the community,” Leong said.

“However, due to Macau’s unbalanced social development, many graduates from medicine streams are unable to find jobs matching their area of expertise,” the lawmaker added. “Some have managed, thanks to their families, to set up their own clinics after obtaining their licenses, and others have chosen to leave Macau and establish themselves in other locations. As a colleague already mentioned, to ensure their subsistence, many medical graduates can only change careers or work as take-away employees, and it is, in fact, regrettable to waste these talents formed after years of study and hard work.”

Leong also said that according to his knowledge, the professions of physician, therapist and pharmacist have been popular in recent years, with around 500 new graduates per year, and an average of around 100 general Western medicine graduates returning to Macau every year. For Leong, there is no shortage of “new blood” in the sector nor is there a need to recruit these professionals abroad, so long as the government is willing to employ the existing local manpower in this sector.