Underpaid Maltese doctors

Roamer dedicated many of his column inches to the current issue of Maltese doctors being underpaid. Normally, MAM is pleased when the press gives publicity to its issues.

Unfortunately, Roamer continues to fudge the issues and effectively failed to reply to MAM's arguments, but continues to emotionalise the issue and even resort to a derogatory personal attack on MAM's president.

Instead of replying argument by argument, he launched an unwarranted personal attack on Dr Stephen Fava. This reflects badly on the author and is most unbecoming for an otherwise respected newspaper. Incidentally, in the same article Roamer also attacks another highly respected organisation, namely Nature Trust, for daring to question his belief that he knows everything about everything.

Putting the unacceptable delivery aside, Roamer failed to answer a simple question that was put to him: "Does he agree with MAM that the government should uphold the law and the EU directives, which EU membership obliges all of us to adhere to?" He only suggests that MAM should challenge the government in court.

Unfortunately, he conveniently chose to ignore the fact that MAM has sent a legal letter. Is he as unconversant with legal procedures as to have failed to realise this is the initial step in legal proceedings?

In every healthy democracy it is expected that the government be a model employer and not first trample on the laws it itself enacts and then challenge the citizen to undo what is blatantly illegal.

It seems that Roamer has insufficient space in his column to include MAM's repeated statements that it does not in any way question the credentials or indeed the deserved praise received by this surgeon from various quarters.

Roamer continues to repeat the government spin, that MAM has a bad bout of professional jealousy. Roamer, in the interest of fair comment, should have rather addressed the issues raised, preferably in a balanced manner: "The government is breaking the law, and the collective agreements signed with MAM, and that is not on."

MAM re-assures Roamer that the figure of Lm45,000 was obtained from highly reliable sources and, in fact, to date this figure has not been officially denied. However, the actual figure is of secondary importance to the upholding of the sacrosanct principles of non-discrimination and law abidance by the state.

Given his current writing mode, Roamer surprisingly brings up one reasonable question. Why is MAM bringing up the issue now and not before? MAM has repeatedly explained that when Malta was not a member of the EU, the government was able to discriminate between foreign citizens and the Maltese.

However, this is not allowed in the EU. To this effect, various parts of the employment and industrial relations act have been amended to be compatible with EU legislation. MAM in fact could only bring up this issue when this contract expired a few months ago and was up for renewal.

Roamer continues to try to deflect the issue (of course, not for the government's sake!) by the totally irrelevant accusation of overcharging by a GP. This is a separate issue and MAM is surprised that Roamer has decided to make these accusations without any evidence.

If this evidence were forthcoming, it would be a matter for the Medical Council to decide whether there was any breach of medical ethics. Should Roamer have any such evidence, he should submit it to the relevant authorities, rather than unethically throwing unsubstantiated accusations in the media.

In any case, MAM remains convinced that the overwhelming majority of general practitioners are honest and hardworking and do not deserve such a blanket smear.

Roamer offers a weak justification of his anti-MAM stance in the 2001 dispute in his last argument.

Does he really believe that the readers can't see through his intentions, when he continues to suggest that MAM was premature to issue directives after almost four years of fruitless negotiations?

Indeed Roamer's suggestion that MAM should refer the dispute for arbitration is, of course, totally unrealistic as the current law does not allow access to such arbitration. However, MAM does more than welcome Roamer's change of heart when he states that Lm35,000 is the appropriate remuneration for a specialist.

In conclusion, MAM is convinced that the Health Division is constrained to explain why, in the context of Malta's EU accession, it continues to break the law and chose to offer favourable remuneration to a single individual and not to other doctors working in Malta.

This is the core issue which will not be buried by ill-intentioned smokescreens and media spins.