Australia may deny work visas to foreign doctors

Australia’s health department on Tuesday 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 there. According to media reports, senior members of Australian medical community had asked the 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 made a formal submission for amendments to the rules.

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

It has suggested 41 health roles to be removed from the Skilled Occupations List, a procedure that identifies occupations that would benefit from skilled migration. The proposals have been welcomed by Australian Medical Association and Rural Doctors Association.

At the end of March, according to Immigration Depar-tment figures, there were 2,155 general practitioners and 1,562 resident medical officers in Australia on visas.