A town in Australia is offering doctors an annual salary of $8,00,000 (Rs 6,56,00,490) and a four-bedroom house free of rent. But all these are being given out of desperation. The town called Quairading is situated in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region. It’s about a two-hour drive east of Perth. The town has been struggling to find a permanent residential doctor for months now. To tackle the lack of medical facilities and a doctor, Dailymail UK reported that the town council has decided to pay Rs 6.56 crores to any GP who wants to work in Quairading. This would cover all running and staff costs for the doctor’s practice too. With this handsome salary, there are also bonuses and incentives.
If the practitioner decides to stay for more than two years in the town, they will receive an extra $12,000 (Rs 9.94 lakhs) and a bonus of $23,000 (Rs 19.05 lakhs), if they work for over five years in the town. The small Wheatbelt town only has about 619 residents and is among many similar rural communities that are struggling to find a residential doctor.
Australia has been struggling with the shortage of general practitioners in small towns across the country. Some towns have even been forced to shut medical centre doors due to this. Shire of Quairading’s President, Peter Smith, told The West: “The council will not stand by idle when the community has such a critical need. If we don’t have a doctor, we won’t have a medical clinic, then we won’t have a hospital, we won’t have a chemist and so the demise will begin.”
The man shared that the council will be posting the attractive job offer in the West Australian medical publications next week. If this fails to attract doctors, it would also advertise in publications on the east coast.
National statistics suggested that only 14 percent of Australian medical students wanted to pursue a career as a general practitioner, and only 4.5 percent were ready to work in a small town like Quairading.
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