SC intervention sought in medical colleges enrolment issues

Islamabad : The youth seeking enrolment in private medical and dental colleges have called for the Supreme Court’s intervention on admission anomalies for corrective measures.

They alleged that the colleges sought donations for admission to MBBS and BDS courses due to the failure of the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) to do the duty of regulating the entire affair.

Some candidates told ‘The News’ on condition of anonymity that the erstwhile Pakistan Medical and Dental Council had capped the fee of private medical and dental colleges at Rs0.85 million but the PMC, which replaced the PMDC last year through a presidential ordinance, removed that bar allowing colleges to charge students fee of choice without let or hindrance.

They also said the Supreme Court had fixed the fee at Rs950,000 in 2018, so the chief justice should take a suo moto notice of the matter and other irregularities regarding admissions by private colleges to fix them.

The candidates insisted that some private colleges were giving away MBBS seats after collecting Rs3 to 5 million donation from every student.

A female candidate said the private medical colleges had fixed 20 marks for admission interview but no one knew how those marks were awarded raising questions about the fairness of the exercise.

The candidates said the PMC’s decisions and policies clearly favoured the ‘mafia’ running private medical colleges.

They also questioned the impartiality of the current Council, the supreme decision-making body at the PMC, and insisted that the body comprised lawyers, singers, an architect, a chartered account and a doctor unlike the previous ones, which had elected members including vice-chancellors and teachers of medical and dental colleges, general practitioners, provincial secretaries and representatives of the National Assembly and Supreme Court.

They wondered how the irrelevant people can regulate medical education in the country.

The candidates insisted that members of the PMC staff were of no help and told them to take the complaints regarding admissions to the medical tribunal, which had been non-functional since 2019.

They demanded of the government to address their grievances regarding enrolments in private medical and dental colleges as well as the functioning of the PMC.