KUCHING – While the rich and famous getting world class treatment at specialist private hospital and clinics, the polyclinic at Jalan Mosque is a ‘daily nightmare’ for patients who have to undergo a lot of hurdles before they could be treated by doctors.
Personal Assistant to Chong Chieng Jen, Dr. Tang Sie Hing went down to the Polyclinic to look at the first hand situation himself for the last two days after receiving complaints from members of the public.
Yesterday, he was aghast to see two patients having their wallets stolen while trying to squeeze through the 400 crowd to get their numbers.
Dr. Tang said some patients came as early as 6 am to get their numbers (doctors started seeing them at 8 am) and there was only one counter opened. Before there were three counters, one counter for retirees, elderly and diabetes but to unknown reasons, there was only one counter opened to service the huge number of patients.
He said due to the long queue, people would be jostling one another, jumping queue, quarrelling and rampant pick pockets. The gate outside the polyclinic even came off yesterday as people fought to get in line first.
“Going to the polyclinic is a stressful job for the patients who have no choice and those who manned the counter are also in a state of anxiety seeing such occurrence daily. There was even a quarrel yesterday when I was there as one person jumped queue. It is all very depressing,” said Dr. Tan.
After writing to the Director of State Health department, Zulkifli Jantan, Dr. Tan said he did not received any respond.
He had forwarded a few suggestion to the Director asking him to open up the counters again as there were five people inside the counter and three pigeon hole.
“I don’t see the logic of five persons manning one pigeon hole while about 300 people were squeezing outside to get in line,” he added.
He also suggested that a CCTV be installed from 6 am to 9 am as that was when the crowd is huge.
“For three hours they could find out who the pick pockets are and alerted the police,” he added.
Dr.Tang said he will again try to set up a meeting with the Director to get the whole picture and to make the place a more conducive place for patients.
He also said the 1Malaysia Clinic which has been mushrooming all over the place was only manned by medical assistants.
“I think the government should take care of the polyclinic, make it a more friendly user place for patients who are already sick before taking the next step of setting up 1Malaysia clinic with no medical doctors manning there,” he added.
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