KP govt decides to re-conduct MDCAT

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Thursday decided to re-conduct the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) in the province.

The government said the Khyber Medical University (KMU) would conduct the medical entrance test.

“There was a long discussion both in favour and against the decision but majority prevailed. It’s a one time dispensation only to restore the credibility of the system,” a senior government official told The News on condition of anonymity.

The KMU is supposed to conduct the test in a month. The decision is a good news for those who failed the test. It, however, hurt the successful candidates and their parents.

The Education and Testing Evaluation Agency (ETEA) staff had detected and recovered the latest devices of Bluetooth from 219 candidates during the entrance examination and lodged the first information reports (FIRs) against them. It was the ETEA staff that informed the police and handed them over the culprits involved in cheating and using the latest technology.

Chief Secretary Nadim Aslam Chaudhry had constituted the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) when the ETEA staff recovered the Bluetooth devices from 219 candidates and reported them to the police.

It transpired came that children of some influential figures, particularly the government officials, were also found using the Bluetooth devices in the MDCAT. The name of a senior government official was constantly mentioned on social media as his son appeared in the MDCAT but didn’t qualify for admission to any medical and dental college. The same official was made part of the JIT and was widely criticised by those who had qualified for admission in the medical and dental colleges.Some of the people were critical of the role of the government for not being able to take any disciplinary or punitive measures against the government officials whose children were among those 219 candidates found guilty by the ETEA cheating in the entrance examination.

It was also an embarrassment for the ETEA staff, as they felt that it has been portrayed as if they were facilitators of the criminals in return for exposing the mafia and its beneficiaries.