LAHORE: The Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC) agreed on Friday to increase annual tuition fee from Rs0.6m to Rs0.9m for admission to private medical and dental colleges across the country.

An official, privy to the information, told Dawn the council’s decision to surrender before the owners of private medical and dental institutions had put more burden on the students and their families who were already been paying through their nose ‘in the name of donations’.

He said the PM&DC also discussed the option to hold admissions to the colleges in private sector by a joint committee of official bodies and the affiliated medical colleges.

These decisions were made in the 153rd council meeting of the PMDC held in Islamabad. Chaired by PMDC President Prof Dr Shabbir Ahmed Lehri, the meeting was attended by the health secretaries from all the four provinces besides other officials concerned.

The meeting was called when the owners of private medical colleges and the PMDC locked horns over the issue of autonomy to private colleges conduct admissions.

When contacted, Mr Lehri confirmed the development, saying the tuition fee increase was the demand of the private medical and dental colleges.

“They had given us a list of nearly a dozen demands and one of them was the annual fee increase,”

he said and added that the PMDC and the private medical institutions had differences over the issue of making admission policy to ensure merit. He said both sides had gone into litigation over the issue and held meetings to find some solution.

Mr Lehri said the private medical institutions had demanded autonomy in holding admissions at colleges level. Another demand was the power to award 12.5 extra marks to the students for aptitude test.

“We accepted their demand of awarding aptitude test marks but on the condition that they will ensure merit,” the PMDC president said.

Under the new policy, he added, the private medical institutions would apprise the authorities concerned of the marks allocated to the each student in the aptitude tests.

He said the merit formula for the entry test would be same –10pc matric marks, 40pc FSc or equivalent, 50pc (entrance test) for the students.

Prof Lehri was reluctant to share further details of the decisions made in the meeting, however, he said the efforts were underway to hold admissions in both public and private sector under a central policy.

He said the admissions process in affiliated medical colleges in both public and private sector would be conducted by ‘one body/institute’ in every province. Like, the University of Health Sciences (UHS) shall be responsible to initiate this process in Punjab, Khyber Medical University in Peshawar, Liaquat University of Medical & Health Sciences, Jamshoro in Sindh, etc.

Dr Javed Asghar, a representative of the Pakistan Association of Private Medical Institutes, told this reporter that a demand list had already been provided to the PMDC.

“We have clearly conveyed to the PMDC that holding admissions is our legitimate right and we are not going to surrender it at any cost,” he said categorically.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2017