Sindh may lower minimum pass percentage for medical admissions

The Sindh government is considering the option of lowering the minimum passing percentage of 65 per cent to pass the recently held Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT) so that the seats in the institutions of medical and dental education in the province should not remain vacant as it happened last year.

This was disclosed by Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho while she addressed a press conference on Saturday at the Sindh Assembly. She was accompanied by Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani, Sindh Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah and Parliamentary Secretary for Health in the Sindh Assembly Qasim Siraj Soomro.

The health minister informed the media that the second option under consideration was that the province should conduct the admission test on its own for medical and dental colleges in the province.

She said the Sindh government had been compelled to consider such options as the last resort keeping in view the fact that the candidates who had appeared in the MDCAT were dissatisfied with the admission test and the concerned students not just of Sindh but of the other provinces as well had been protesting against the test system.

Dr Azra said the Sindh government had been considering the option of preparing on its own the merit lists for admissions to medical and dental colleges of the province after lowering the minimum passing marks in view of the availability of seats in the educational institutions.

She maintained that making the merit lists on its own would allow the province to fill all the seats of its medical and dental colleges instead of inviting students from other provinces to take admissions on those vacant seats.

She appealed to the federal ministry of national health services, regulation and coordination to instantly review the situation concerning MDCAT in order to protect the academic future of a large number of students in the country.

“We shouldn’t be compelled and pushed to the wall as it is the matter concerning the future of our children, and merely acting as a silent spectator on this issue is not an option for us,” she remarked.

She said the province could also exercise the other option of conducting its own admission test as the last resort although exercising such an option would seriously displease the relevant federal health authorities and there was the chance that the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) would not recognise the provincial test.

She said the PMC had pursued an ill-advised policy and decided to increase the minimum pass percentage of MDCAT from 60 per cent to 65 per cent last year when there was no need to increase the minimum qualifying marks at the time the education of college students had been phenomenally affected due to the anti-coronavirus lockdown regime.

“This unjust decision has darkened the future of our children as their academic career is at stake. We have written a letter to them to make them understand the genuine problems of our students but they have been adamant on this issue,” said the health minister while talking about the PMC.

She said the province was fully empowered as per the law and constitution to devise its own policy and test system to offer admissions to its medical and dental colleges.

Dr Azra explained that owing to the unfair system of MDCAT, 492 of the total 600 seats for bachelors of dental surgery available in the province had remained vacant last year. She added that similarly the private medical colleges in Sindh had a total of 2,600 seats but 30 per cent of them could not be filled last year.

She lamented the private medical and dental colleges in the province had been left with no option but to offer admissions to students belonging to other provinces to fill those seats.

Dr Azra warned that the province would face a shortage of doctors and dentists after four to five years as the non-native students would go back to their home provinces to practise their profession after completing medical or dental education in Sindh.

She said MDCAT was not conducted on a single day as it was a month-long exercise, due to which all the candidates did not get a level-playing field.

The question papers of the MDCAT were based on the federal and Punjab’s syllabi and the Sindh’s curriculum had not been considered while preparing the questions, she alleged.

She went on to remark that the PMC had lost all its utility when it failed to understand the problems of the concerned students. The commission should not conduct the admission test when it lacked the capability to conduct it in a proper manner, she said.

Dr Azra recalled that the PMC had been imposed on the country through an ordinance without having the consent of all the federating units in Pakistan.

“Since the PMC came into existence, the hardships of doctors and students in the country increased while the federating units are also no closer to each other,” she said.

The health minister was of the view that the PMC carried no benefit as it had failed to serve the nation and it also did not serve the cause of maintaining cohesion and unity among the federating units.