Australia may deny work visas to foreign doctors

Australia’s health department has  favoured imposing a ban on overseas-trained doctors from applying for work visas to end shortage of locally trained medicos, a move likely to hit Indian doctors working in the country.

According to media reports, senior members of the Australian medical community had asked the federal government to stop issuing visas to overseas-trained doctors after saying that skill shortage in regional and remote areas was not being addressed by the current migration programme.

The Department of Health, which shared the same concern, has now made a formal submission for amendments to the immigration rules.

The department has said that that locally trained doctors would struggle to find jobs if the changes were not made to stop the immigration, media from Australia reported.

It has suggested 41 health roles, including general practitioners, resident medical officers, surgeons and anaesthetists, to be removed from the Skilled Occupations List, a procedure that identifies occupations that would be benefitted by skilled migration. President of the Australian Medical Association Michael Gannon was quoted by ABC saying: “Often what we’re doing is filling up corporate clinics in the middle of our cities, now that’s not the intention of these regulations.”