10th April 2013
Let me share with you my situation.
My daughter did fairly well in her ‘A’ level. She got 3As and 1B – B
for Physics but scored As for the 2 most important subjects for
medicine – Biology and Chemistry.
She applied to NUS and was rejected. Not even an interview. She has
always wanted to be a doctor her whole life. Her studies in Biology and
Chemistry were top-notched. She is very self-discipline and we never
have problems telling her to do her homework or reminding her to study
since young. When NUS rejected her, she cried day and night.
As parents, how can we see her cry like that? It really breaks our
hearts. We then made a family decision and sold our 5-room flat to
support her medicine study overseas. We moved back to my parents –
imagine, both of us are now in the 50s and we have to live with my
parents who are now close to 80s!
My daughter applied to the overseas universities and guess what, she
was accepted by a few: Monash University, University of Western
Australia, Imperial College. In the end, we chose University of Western
Australia because it’s closer to Singapore and it’s also cheaper to
study in Australia than in UK. Still, the tuition fee itself cost me at
least A$200K+, not counting room and board. All in, it will be A$300K+.
I’m glad to see her happily studying medicine in Australia now.
Reading this article (‘Doctor-to-population ratio improved through massive FT recruitment‘)
even angers me further. Why are we taking in foreign doctors when we
do not even want to give our own Singaporeans a chance? And to think
that I’ve served NS, for what? Why is the government not taking care of
our own people first??? The fact that my daughter was accepted by some
of these good universities shows that she is absolutely qualified to
study medicine. Furthermore, she is really passionate about it. Why is
the government depriving her, our very own people, that opportunity? To
add further insults, I’ve read here that these foreign doctors actually
graduated from some of these dubious third world universities?
This is really a big screw up by our government. Instead of investing
to train more Singaporeans to become doctors, we are recruiting more
foreign doctors. This is totally unacceptable and I might add, a
treacherous act by the government!
I’m actually quite apolitical but this incident of NUS rejecting my
daughter to study medicine when other good universities are accepting
her, has given me a new perspective. The fact that I have to sell away
my house and move back with my parents who are close to 80s really
hurts me a lot. At their age, I should be taking care of them and yet,
they have to shelter my family! I have one more son, because of his
sister’s influence, is more inclined to study biology and medicine. I
really don’t know what to do if he decides to also study medicine and
NUS rejects him too. I have no more houses to sell. The only left would
be by then, I can take out my CPF and use it to finance his overseas
study.
I really cursed this government!
One more thing I would like to add – Yes, I’ll be attending the May Day protest!
.
Angry father
* Comment first appeared in: Doctor-to-population ratio improved through massive FT recruitment
No comments:
Post a Comment