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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 7 MAY 2017 28 Letters A study on job satisfaction among state general practitioners in Malta has re- vealed poor levels of satisfaction among doctors in primary care who say they are unappreciated and neglected, blaming poor pay and career progression. The survey by Dr Mario Sammut, a specialist in family medicine, published in the Malta Medical Journal, showed 41 per cent of GPs felt "unappreciated, neglected and disrespected", 39 per cent experiencing job dissatisfaction, stress and depression, while 31 per cent felt verbally and physically used, misused and abused. The lack of GPs working in state health centres in Malta is believed to be a result of poor job satisfaction and little incentives for career progression, a cause of the brain drain aff licting the core of young medical graduates who enter the national health service, and leave shortly to the UK. Doctors complained that patients were not respectful of their profes- sional role, while the administration was uncaring and indifferent to their opinion. They also accused colleagues of "selfishness, side-kicking, and mak- ing obstacles". They complained of clerical paper- work and inadequate remuneration and long working hours, while one-third of the interviewees said they receive ver- bal abuse from patients. Junior doctors also said they felt abused by their fellow colleagues. A young doctor who graduated in 1997 and who was interviewed for the survey singled out the difference between the UK's and Malta's national health service: "It felt like being a denigrated, second class medical professional. In the UK, the GP is the fulcrum of the NHS. In Malta he is merely a lame duck, a disre- spected professional who is underpaid and is looked down by fellow colleagues and the administration." Another GP, who graduated in 1985, said the best description of his job in the GP service was that of a "paid slave". Another described himself as a "f loor cloth… used and abused by patients and unfortunately also by colleagues." Malta's government GPs form the backbone of state primary care, servic- ing one-third of the population through nine health centres and 45 polyclinics. Of 136 questionnaires, 71 GPs work- ing in health centres and polyclinics between 1998 and 2003 returned a response. They claimed that the lack of government GPs was due to poor pay and benefits, poor training prospects and career progression, and poor work- ing conditions. However, Sammut said, "continuity of care is poor and doctor-patient rela- tionship is weak ", due to absent patient registration and incomplete record- keeping. There is also a lack of GPs in permanent posts – just two-thirds of the recommended 110. The analysis revealed just a few posi- tive feelings among state GPs – only one per cent expressed positive feelings about " job security" or "pride" – while part-timers registered higher satisfac- tion levels than full-time state GPs. It suggested improving salaries, mak- ing hours more f lexible, and improving doctors' working environment. It also suggested developing more post-grad- uate courses, one of the main short- comings for young doctors who leave the island to pursue training and work abroad. "These help to raise the practice of family medicine to specialist status and facilitate the introduction of career progression for family doctors. Thus, while students and new students would be attracted to specialise in family medicine, GPs already in practive might be tempted by the improved career opportunity of a registrar or consult- ant post to stay in primary health care instead of turning to more profitable private practice." News – 29 April, 2007 Send your letters to: The Editor, MaltaToday, MediaToday Ltd. Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 | Fax: (356) 21 385075 E-mail: newsroom@mediatoday.com.mt. Letters to the Editor should be concise. No pen names are accepted. State GPs dissatisfied with job, survey reveals Malta Union of Teachers elections Reference is made to an article published by your newspaper on 28 April, which reports a press conference given by Mr Franklin Barbara. By means of this reply I would like to clarify a number of inaccuracies reported so as to safeguard the integrity of the Union I represent as well as its outgoing election board. 1. Mr Barbara has been General Secretary of the MUT for the past 10 years. As the person responsi- ble for the union's statute he had the duty to draw the attention of the council and general confer- ence if he thought that the elec- toral process it contained was not clear enough. Unfortunately Mr Barbara only came up with objec- tions and additions to the long established process well after he nominated himself for candidacy, precisely a few hours before the election board starting processing the vote documents. 2. The requests put forward by Mr Barbara were numerous and most of the requests were already acceded to. His request to stamp the votes himself with a personal vote could not be taken on board for the simple reason that his re- quests were handed to the board on the day they started to work on the votes. Mr Barbara knew about the schedule of work of the board well in advance and had he sent his requests before, the board would have been in a much bet- ter position to consider them all favourably since there would have been ample time to communicate the decisions taken to the other candidates. I am quite positively sure that everyone would agree that having one candidate putting a personal stamp on the vot- ing document while the other candidates were in the dark would not have been exactly the ideal situation. 3. The claim that the number of votes printed was unknown is false. The union has receipts and job cards which show the exact number of votes printed as well as the exact number of voters eligible to vote. The MUT, as all entities with a hard copy voting system, always prints extra votes in the election because there are always members who ask for a change of document due to mis- takes while voting. This was very well known to Mr Barbara, given that as general secretary he was often coordinating this process himself in the past. Moreover the election board, as has been done in the past elections of the 98-year old union, had already explained to Mr Barbara and his supporters a number of times how the extra votes will be disposed of if unused. 4. The incident reported by Mr Barbara, as explained to him a number of times already but which explanation he apparently chose to ignore, was a combina- tion of sorts. To start with Mr Barbara's objection to a candidate having a meeting with the elec- tion board is beyond his remit, es- pecially when considering that he himself held a meeting alone with the election board on the first day of vote processing and without any prior notice. Secondly, unlike the impression given, the elec- tion board members (who ended up being photographed without authorisation) did not visit the union to meet any candidate but they visited the union more than 12 hours after they resigned for the sole purpose of sealing the election room door as advised by the union's lawyer in my pres- ence. The fact that there was Mr Bonnici and other persons in the building was not the board's fault. The election board chairperson as well as another colleague agreed a time with me which was conveni- ent to both and I was waiting for them for the sole purpose of seal- ing the door. 5. Mr Barbara is reported to have said that I, the current Presi- dent, was biased. If carrying out my duty of defending the integrity of the MUT's structures, myself, and the volunteers appointed for the election board means that I am biased then so be it. If being biased means siding with one candidate and not with another then I ask Mr Barbara to provide evidence dated as from his notice of candidature of this claim. To conclude the MUT will be convening an ad hoc council meeting to decide a way forward, which will be communicated to all members accordingly. Kevin Bonello President, MUT Clearing up confused history I cannot help noting that Mr John Guillaumier has never really lost his acerbic irrev- erent take on the Catholic sentiments of the majority of the Maltese. His insensitivity towards anything uplifting and religious, and aggressive anti-Catholic bias has spurred him on to unleash similar stuff for a number of years. I quote excerpts from a re- view of a book "Bearing False Witness" written by Rodney Stark, a historian of religion and sociologist who is not a Roman Catholic but wrote this book, not in defence of the Church but in defence of history. We all know, and any main- stream textbook would agree, that the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history, and the Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power etc. But what if these long-held beliefs were all wrong? Why have we held these wrong-headed ideas so strongly and for so long? In fact some of our most firmly held ideas about his- tory, ideas that paint the Catholic Church in the most negative light are, in fact, fiction. The false accounts of Christian anti-Semitism, persecution of pagans, the Dark Ages, crusading for land, loot and converts monstrosity of the Inquisition, scientific heresies, slavery etc. were all scrutinized soundly, debunked and majestically argued in a stunning powerful and ulti- mately persuasive way in this book. Egotism, false ideology and deep-rooted prejudice often work together to give us a false truth. John Azzopardi Zabbar New power station, but little peace of mind One seems to forget the pollution generated by the Marsa power station, when it was operated by coal and the storage place for coal was the quay nearby. In the 70s up to 1987 no consideration for the health and safety of the inhabit- ants was taken into account. The government of the day boasted about the plant, while the people over the years have and are still suffering the consequences. We are again being brain- washed with propaganda, to justify the investment of the new state-of-the-art power station, with a storage tanker of liquid gas, afloat nearby. Again, the authorities gave no considera- tion for the health and safety of the inhabitants living on this island. The people simply have to wait and suffer the health consequences and/or of a major catastrophic accident, that the new clean state-of-the-art power station brings upon the island. If the money spent had been invested in the pipeline, the government would have limited the risk and gave peace of mind to the inhabitants living around that area. Joseph Aquilina Bahar ic Caghaq