MINISTER within the Health Ministry, Dr Bheri Ramsaran, has issued a warning to doctors trained with Government funds, but who are refusing to serve the nation as, when, and where the need arises.

Although scholarship awards are funded by the host governments, as in Cuba, Guyana’s Government still expends massive sums toward the eventual acquisition of a useful tool in its developmental processes, with a primary focus on delivering and expanding equitable and dependable health service to communities across the country.

The monies that are invested in the education of these persons are the people’s money, without which they could not have been afforded higher education, so it is incumbent upon them to serve the people, albeit for a limited time, to defray the costs for the quality of life they would enjoy for the rest of their lives as a result of the people’s sacrifice.

The heavy expenditure necessary to acquire higher learning, especially in the scientific stream, once prohibited many persons with great potential from following their dreams and achieving their ambitions.

The prohibitive costs of pursuing a career in medicine severely constricted our access to medical personnel in the past.

However, thanks to collaborative efforts of Cuba’s President Fidel Castro and Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, this situation is a thing of the past, and currently the number of doctors in the health sector, with an additional number from the next qualifying batch from Cuba, will take the number of doctors in Guyana’s health sector to close to a million, which should suffice for all our needs for adequate staffing of senior medical practitioners in the health sector.

But this development momentum in the health sector is being derailed by the unwillingness of recipients of the Government’s and people’s largesse to provide service to the people in the requisite areas of need because, in the words of Dr. Ramsaran, “They think they have all rights but no duties.”

So what happened to the Hippocratic Oath?

Former President Dr Cheddi Jagan had once remarked that doctors had become businessmen and that the welfare and health of patients was no longer paramount, or of primary importance.

As Dr Ramsaran noted, the majority of scholarships to Cuba are in the area of medicine, and this is based primarily on national needs and the fact that “Cuba is recognised as a very good health care provider of clinical services, and a good provider of health education training.

Unprofessional behaviour and misconduct by Public Sector personnel has become endemic in Guyana, no less so in the health stream, where the lives of persons have been unnecessarily lost because of professional misconduct and compromised delivery of service to patients by healthcare providers.

During Cabinet’s outreach in Berbice last week President Jagdeo warned of zero tolerance toward state employees who provide service in the breach of their mandate, a position which has been reiterated by Dr Ramsaran relative to delinquent doctors who refuse to serve the nation in the regions, even the regions from which they came, and to which they owe filial duty, as much as, if not more than they owe the nation patriotic duty.

So yes, Dr Ramsaran, the Government is accountable to the people for the services provided the nation; and those who would seek to rob the nation of the benefits of the training they received at the people’s expense must be dealt with in no uncertain manner.

There was one case recently of a scholarship awardee during the PNC era who, decades later, had not served the nation for the stipulated time, which was a contractual obligation, but whose father had the temerity to take the current Government to task for not lifting the travel embargo levied against all scholarship contract violators. This father, a member of the media, went public and, instead of taking his daughter to task for robbing the nation, instead lambasted the Government, probably because he thought that his daughter’s acquisition of an education at taxpayers’ expense was her God-given right.

The President and Minister within the Health Ministry are on the right track. The trend of lawlessness needs to be stopped – and zero tolerance is the right response. Maybe legislation needs to be passed also to make misconduct and unprofessional behaviour in the areas of service delivery to the public criminal offences.

Because there is a cost factor involved, and when the nation is robbed then the thieves automatically become criminals and should be penalised with the full force of the law.