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medical association, engineers, and architects, have the national

focal points for each of the professions.

Now, the challenge would be this that every profession
is quite jealous about its own space, not quite willing to open

up that engineers from another member of ASEAN could move
in quite easily, and the medical doctors, nurses are the same;

all professions have this jealousy about their own space. And
then for some, or I could say for many, probably the problem
would be the facility of the language. For Thai doctors to

move into the Philippines, for Thai engineers who move into
Brunei, for nurses who move from Vietnam into Myanmar,

you have the limitation of the communication skills. English
is a working language of ASEAN. That in this Charter. But very
few of the 620 million people of ASEAN could communicate

fluently in English, but it is the working language. So, we have this
problem of communicating your skills to your clients; if you

are a doctor, it’s your patient.

The language skill is another problem that each and
every country, each and every medical school, will have to

make sure that we are in a certain level of language or even
in English competency. If English is the working language of

ASEAN, in these professions, at least, the medical association of
Thailand should not require that for a doctor from the Philippines
to work in Thailand that you have to speak Thai because we

Policy Forum 25

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