The Hospital Authority has promised that the cost of a pay rise - announced yesterday - for frontline public hospital doctors from October will not be passed on to patients. Authority chairman Anthony Wu Ting-yuk said he expected the pay rise - to cost an extra HK$355 million a year - would boost morale and improve services. The authority yesterday announced the new pay structure for about 2,000 doctors who joined after April 2000. Previously, doctors who had joined afterwards were on a lower pay scale because of the economic downturn in 2000. The salary for post-2000 doctors will increase by 15 to 38 per cent, with the new starting salary, including allowances, set at HK$55,015 and the maximum set at HK$116,930. All doctors in the authority also have just had an across-the-board pay rise of 4.62 per cent or 4.96 per cent this month in line with the recent pay rise of civil servants. The authority will offer a nine-year training contract instead of three-year contracts to new doctors. Once the doctors have completed specialised training, they will be offered permanent employment. Also, it said it would try to reduce the administrative work for senior doctors, freeing them up to look after patients and train junior doctors. Authority chief executive Shane Solomon said patients would not bear the cost of the pay rise. Although the government would only offer an extra HK$138 million a year for the pay rise, he said the rest would be covered by re-allocation of internal resources and new income. Mr Wu hoped the new pay scale would boost morale and reduce wastage. 'We believe a better working environment and better training can help enhance the quality of the HA services and reduce medical blunders.' He said the authority was also negotiating with the nurses and allied health professions for a better pay scale for staff who joined in 2000. He said a pay rise was expected in October but that a budget had not been set. Frontline Doctors Union chairman Ernie Lo Chi-fung said although the pay scale for post-2000 doctors would be improved, it was still inferior to the one for those who joined before 2000. He urged the authority to resolve the problem of 'equal work, unequal pay'. Public Doctors' Association president Duncan Ho Hung-kwong said that in recent years, many doctors had left public hospitals because of the poor pay and working environment, which have affected services. He appreciated the new pay scale and believed that it could help enhance the quality of services and benefit patients.