LAHORE: In a landmark step, the Punjab government has introduced centralised induction policy in all the medical and dental colleges of the province by eliminating the role of private institutions in the admission process.

Headed by the health secretary, the provincial admission committee will be admitting students against all seats in both public and private medical and dental colleges in Punjab for the forthcoming session, according to a Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) of the Punjab government.

Taking advantage of the ‘flaws’ in the regulations of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), most of the private sector medical and dental institutions had been charging the students huge sums in the name of ‘donations and gifts’ for admitting them to MBBS and BDS courses.

Through the University of Health Sciences (UHS), Punjab government attempted many a time to implement centralised induction policy in the private medical and dental colleges also, but failed due to non-cooperation by the PMDC, the SRO said.

Under the new policy, which also has feedback from senior medical teachers like Prof Eice Muhammad, Prof A Bari and other PMDC members, only the entry test conducted by the UHS would be mandatory for admission to private institutions.

The policy bars private medical or dental colleges or their affiliating universities from conducting any aptitude or entry test. Fixed admission fee would be deposited with bank accounts of these private institutions online and no other monetary benefit in any form would be collected by the college under the policy.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister’s Adviser on Health Khwaja Salman Rafique said Punjab had become the first province to implement PMDC criteria, based on open merit, in letter and spirit.

Implementation of this policy would ensure transparent and merit based admissions to private sector medical colleges as previously even the students having good marks would fail to get admission in these institutions because they could not pay heavy donations, said the adviser.

A senior doctor involved in the inspection of public and private sector medical and dental colleges told Dawn on Saturday that certain sections of the PMDC admission regulations were amended in 2013 on the pretext of ensuring uniform standard of medical and dental education in the country.

“The ‘donations and gifts’ ranged between Rs5 million and Rs8 million, in addition to the maximum prescribed fee by the PMDC in its rules,” said the senior doctor.

However, during inspection of a number of private medical and dental colleges to evaluate infrastructure and teaching facilities, it transpired that the amendments were aimed only at benefiting these institutions.

“Most of the private colleges do not strictly observe eligibility criteria for admission. These are provisionally recognised for not meeting the required PMDC criteria. They have not hired on regular basis the required faculty members, nor they have the required number of patients in their attached hospitals. But these institutions were seeking donations and ‘gifts’ from the students on one pretext or the other,” said the teacher.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2016