The Training and Scholarship General Department stated that the Ministry of Health always encourages its employees to further their education and obtain higher qualifications; as it adopted several policies and procedures that motivate its employees to further their education at the adequate fields with their positions in order to serve MOH beneficiaries. Emanating from the belief of the significance of promoting the level of its employees’ qualifications, the MOH endeavored to develop the abilities, skills and knowledge of its employees who offer health services to keep up with the accelerated advancements in the field of health care. In addition, MOH endeavored to remove obstacles that MOH employees encounter in their quest for achieving that goal through internal and overseas scholarships. The number of overseas scholars reached about 1424 during 1433H, besides the internal scholarship of 2420 employees in 1433H in order to obtain scientific degrees in various majors, as well as 343 technicians to be enrolled to the internal bridging program.
The Training and Scholarship General Department revealed that internal and overseas scholarship requires MOH employees to go through 4 standard steps, that all MOH employees are aware of according to the employees qualification plan to serve the interest of the job title. For the employees willing to further their studies, the procedure starts with making a request to the specified region’s health affairs directorate, after identifying the scholarship terms, that they practice their technical tasks effectively. Then, the health affairs directorate directs the requests to the concerned department in the Ministry in order to confirm the scientific approach and the need of the major. Afterwards, requests are directed to the MOH Training and Scholarship General Department in order to check the university’s level, how suitable the major is to the position and the classification of the employee after graduation, by contacting the concerned authority in the Ministry of Higher Education and the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS) to be submitted to the concerned authority. The fourth step is to send requests to Training and Scholarship of Civil Service Employees Committee for the final approval and issuance of the internal or overseas scholarship decision.
The Department stated that MOH, like any other government sector, used to allow its employees to be fully devoted to furthering their studies and obtaining the qualification, and then, the qualification used to be registered in order to upgrade the career status of the employee. However, in 1421H, internal scholarship regulation was issued to regulate the mechanism of scholarship requests and the categories involved for all employees in the Kingdom. Afterwards, organizational regulations of internal scholarships were set pursuant to Article 1, Paragraph D, in order to benefit from the qualifications of those who did not get the approval of the Civil Service for career purposes; and pursuant to the laws and regulations of Civil Service. Those regulations were adopted in 10/11/1428H, corresponding to (20/11/2007) including term no. 17 of paragraph 17 of qualifications laws acquired without an approval from Training and Scholarship of Civil Service Employees Committee, which stipulates: “For those who obtain a qualification after the issuance of the internal scholarship regulations without a regulatory document through the full devotion, that qualification does not count unless approved by the Civil Service Council; the year 1428H is deemed to be the last year to allow MOH employees to be fully devoted to further their studies internally.”
Furthermore, the Department stated that there is currently a group of MOH employees who have been approved to further their education to obtain scientific degrees as in the case of the other public sectors who were still studying before the issuance of the internal scholarship regulations in 1428H. All of them were approved without the prior approval by the Civil Service Employees Committee of the Ministry of Civil Services, which clarified that among those there was diploma holders in medical colleges affiliated with the MOH as well as bachelor, Master’s and PhD degree holders.
The Training and Scholarship General Department added that the MOH has exerted great efforts to find solutions for those employees that the Minister of Health contacted the General Secretariat of the Council of Civil Service as it is the competent authority pursuant to No 17 which stipulates that the approval of qualifications is of Civil Service Council specialty. There is a constant coordination between the MOH and the competent authorities to find solutions for those employees. Also, the Training and Scholarship General Department assured those employees as it will follow up with the concerned authorities to improve their career status.