LAHORE, Oct 20: The University of Health Sciences (UHS) has no plan to implement uniform tuition fee structure for private medical colleges in the province.

The UHS will, however, get 10 per cent share from their respective annual receipts under a uniform policy.

This was stated by UHS board of governors chairman Dr Mahmood Ahmad Chaudhry on Monday. He was speaking at a press briefing after the declaration of MBBS third professional annual examination results at the UHS syndicate room.

He said the UHS had also asked the private medical colleges to submit financial statements indicating existing and likely revenue sources as well as expenditure already incurred and likely to be incurred during the operation of the institution.

He said that this clause would help the university to check tuition fees to be charged by the private medical institutions.

He said the 10 per cent share to be collected from all private medical colleges and public sector colleges offering admissions on self-finance basis would be reflected in university’s regular budget.

He said the money would be used to develop the UHS as well as hire highly paid medical teachers from abroad. He said the university was also spending millions of rupees on its development as it purchased computer hardware worth Rs11 million and a software worth Rs2.5 million.

Answering a question, he said the UHS did not require to get any sort of permission from the Punjab government to ask private medical colleges to pay 10 per cent of their annual income to the university.

He said the university’s syndicate and BoG had already approved to get the 10 per cent share. He said the share collected from the private medical colleges would be exposed for audit to be conducted by the Punjab and the federal governments.

Dr Chaudhry also said that out of 22 private medical colleges that had applied for affiliation, five institutions had signed the affidavit that include the clause of paying 10 per cent annual income share.

He also claimed that the money collected from private medical colleges would also be used to support deserving students. He said the university had also reduced examination fee from Rs3,700 to Rs1,500 to benefit the students.

Regarding the Lahore Medical and Dental College and the Fatima Memorial Medical and Dental College, UHS vice-chancellor Prof Malik Husain Mubashir said the Lahore High Court decision required that the UHS would grant them the status already offered by the PU.

He said the UHS had sought these two medical colleges’ status with the PU and found that these were granted provisional affiliation.

For regular affiliation, he said the UHS had now sent its team to the Fatima Memorial Medical and Dental College for inspection. He said the affiliation committee report was under process. He also said that no affiliation committee team had yet visited the Lahore Medical College.

Prof Mubashir also said that the students of these two institutions had been allowed to sit for the next second annual examinations of respective professional examinations to be conducted by the UHS.