LAHORE: The Punjab government seems to be reluctant to increase the seats reserved for the children of overseas Pakistanis in public sector medical and dental institutions.

Currently, as many as 66 seats are reserved in all the 20 government medical and dental colleges of Punjab for the children of the overseas Pakistani citizens, constituting less than two percent of the total.

In April this year, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif addressed a high-profile gathering of a delegation of overseas Pakistanis from various regions, including the US, UK, Europe, the Middle East etc and hailed the sacrifices and contributions of the expatriates declaring them as the “crown of the nation”. He also announced that 15 percent reserved seats had been allocated in medical colleges of the country for overseas Pakistanis, which would allow more than 3,000 students to pursue medical studies in Pakistan.

On September 17, the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC) issued a letter and apprised the Ministry of Overseas Pakistani & Human Resource Development Islamabad stating that it had implemented the PM’s directive and duly communicated it to all the relevant stakeholders.

In April, PM announced 15pc reserved seats in colleges, whereas province’s admission policy allocates less than 2pc

However, a senior official claimed that all hopes of overseas Pakistanis were dashed when the Punjab government’s new admission policy for 2025-26 did not reflect the PM’s directive. Notified in October 2025, he said, the policy had not mentioned the ‘development’ the overseas Pakistani citizens were waiting for in the wake of the PM’s announcement made in April of the same year.

He said that the education for the children of overseas Pakistanis was absolutely free in government medical colleges. However, through the new policy, Punjab abolished this scheme. In the revised policy for the 2025-26 academic session, it declared that the students admitted against the overseas quota in the public sector medical and dental colleges would have to pay an annual fee of US $10,000.

Presently, the 20 government medical and dental colleges in Punjab were offering admissions against 3,379 seats, 3,121 for MBBS and 258 for BDS.

An official of the University of Health Sciences (UHS) Lahore claimed that the PM’s directive was related to the 15 percent quota of reserved seats for the private sector medical and dental colleges and not for the state-run institutions. He said that the PMDC was already implementing the same scheme in private medical colleges in letter and spirit for the last many years.

Unfortunately, the UHS official said, the children of the overseas Pakistanis had not been showing keen interest in applying against these seats, as private medical colleges were charging exorbitant fees, Rs2.5million per year. Consequently, private colleges converted a majority of these reserved vacant slots to open merit to enroll local candidates.

He said that the major concern of overseas Pakistanis was about the reserved seats in state-run hospitals, as they were ready to pay an annual fee of US $10,000 as announced by the Punjab government in the new policy.

“Actually, they wanted the government to increase the quota of the reserved seats for the overseas Pakistani students from two percent to 15 percent”, the UHS official said. By increasing it to 15 percent, they would have as many as 500 seats, which were currently only 66. Interestingly, the official revealed that the PML-N’s Punjab government had been working on a proposal to get rid of admissions against ‘quota systems’.

“The concerns of the overseas Pakistanis are genuine, but the Punjab government is not in a position to accommodate them as all the state-run medical institutions are already facing multiple issues related to maintaining the standards of quality medical education,” the official said.

On the other hand, an overseas Pakistani rejected the claim of the UHS official and said that the PMDC’s letter of May 23 had not mentioned that the new 15 percent reserved seats quota was only for private medical colleges.

The PMDC letter said, “A Pakistani citizen permanently resident in a foreign country, Green Card Holder, Iqama Holder, Maple Card Holder, who has studied and passed intermediate/FSC/HSSC 12th grade examination or equivalent from inside or outside Pakistan are eligible for admissions against 15 percent foreign seats (withing seat allocation) as defined in Regulation 7 of Admission Regulation 2023 and communicated wide a notification issued on March 21, 2025”.

The overseas Pakistani claimed that the above-mentioned PMDC notification was meant for both the government and public sector medical and dental colleges.

Published in Dawn, December 8th, 2025