Association of Private Medical and Dental Institutions of Pakistan (Sindh Chapter) President and Ibn-e-Sina University Chancellor Prof Dr Syed Razi Muhammad has drawn the attention of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to the problems of Pakistani medical students studying in Kyrgyzstan.
In a letter to the PM, he stated that every year, a large number of students left Pakistan to study MBBS and BDS courses in different parts of the world and this brought lot of hardships to those students and their families.
Prof Razi Muhammad said the nation recently saw its youths being beaten and harassed in Kyrgyzstan for no fault of theirs. He wrote that those students studied in colleges away from home, most of which had standards way below those of the medical and dental colleges in Pakistan.
The letter read that those students did not only have to face the hardships and aggressive attitude of local students, but were getting substandard education that costed Pakistan billions of dollars of foreign exchange.
The Ibn-e-Sina University chancellor stated that fortunately, there was a solution as many, but not all, medical colleges could admit 150 students each year in their MBBS programme and the remaining were waiting for their applications to be approved for enhancement of their seats from 100 to 150.
In the past, the letter read, the seats were increased from 50 to 100 through an administrative order and the same process could be repeated to enhance the number of MBBS seats of the remaining colleges from 100 to 150.
Such a step could create only in private medical colleges 3,250 seats per year and this would mean that 16,250 students could be brought back immediately to various classes of MBBS and thereafter 3,250 students could be kept in Pakistan every year, the letter read.
It was argued that similarly, many, but not all, dental colleges could admit 75 students each year in their BDS programmes. The remaining colleges awaited their applications to be approved for enhancement of their seats from 50 to 75. If this was done through an executive order, it could create only in private dental colleges 900 seats. This would mean that 3,600 students could be brought back immediately to various classes of BDS and thereafter 900 students could be kept in Pakistan every year.
The letter stated that single step would result in bringing over about 20,000 Pakistani students back to Pakistan immediately, and thereafter keeping about 5,000 students within the country saving them from going abroad and studying in unrecognised colleges that cost billions of dollars of foreign exchange.