The Malaysian Insight

A DAP lawmaker has called on Putrajaya to explain the reduced allocation for medicines despite having more revenue from the goods and services tax.

Kulai MP Teo Nie Ching said it was ironic that the lower allocation started in 2015, the year GST was introduced.

“Between 2010 and 2014, the budget for medicines was increased by at least 10% each year.

“But starting 2015, the amount was reduced, despite a spike in the number of patients turning to government healthcare due to an increase in the cost of living.

“The Barisan Nasional government must explain why, despite collecting more and more revenue from GST, they are unable to provide better healthcare for the people,” she said in a press conference at Parliament today.

Teo said this year, the federal government had allocated RM2.03 billion (-3.78%) for pharmacy and medicine supply, compared with RM2.1 billion (-9.28%) last year and RM2.32 billion (-2.58%) in 2015.

“If we are unable to combat corruption, GST is not going to save the country. You can see that even though GST is helping the government collect more revenue from the people, the budget for medicine supply for government hospitals has been reduced.

“This shows that if there is no financial and drastic reform in combating corruption, the queues at government hospitals are going to get longer and the quality (of services provided) will decline.” – November 7, 2017.