Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Thursday, October 29, 2026, that the state stopped “a long time ago” committing to hire every graduate, and that the assignment system that covered all graduates of medical faculties is no longer suitable, during his meeting with university students in Suez Governorate, on the sidelines of his opening of the first phase of the Suez University Hospital.
Madbouly’s remarks came in response to a fourth-year dentistry student who told him: “Right now, as the dentistry sector, there is no assignment, the numbers are very high,” and asked either for assignment under a certain system or for a solution that reduces the numbers. The prime minister replied: “In the past, the state at one point used to say whoever graduates, I will hire.. the state stopped this a long time ago,” and added: “We have a culture that we all want to secure a government job.”
Madbouly explained that the government is reorganizing admission numbers at medical faculties, as it has begun increasing admissions to faculties of human medicine, while reducing numbers in specialties including dentistry and pharmacy. He said there are cases in which between 20 and 25 dentists share a single chair, while the actual need does not exceed five or six dentists.
At the same meeting, Madbouly said in response to a nursing student that incomes in Egypt “are not at a level that can be compared with other countries,” pointing to the president’s directive at the Egypt Forum to gradually raise the minimum wage from 8,000 pounds ($165.63) to 15,000 pounds ($310.56) over two or three years, and to the fact that the government apparatus employs 4 million people.
Photo: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
