RAWALPINDI, Jan 8: The administrative control of nursing schools has been handed over to the medical colleges concerned, officials told this reporter on Thursday.

Previously these institutions were administered by the district government through the executive district officer (EDO) health. Under the new arrangement, complete financial and administrative control of nursing schools has been transferred to the principal of the medical college concerned.

This is the third department to have been taken back from the administrative control of the district government's health department, which originally had six sections under its control.

Previously, the population welfare department and blood transfusion services were withdrawn. The district government's health department has now been left with the network of grass-root health care facilities; the municipal health services and the district council's health branch comprising dispensaries.

Sources say the teaching hospitals had requested the provincial government for the control of the nursing schools on administrative grounds. "We had been faced with a host of managerial problems," commented a medical superintendent.

A source, conversant with the developments in this connection, said: "The thinking behind this change is that after all two parallel systems of administrations could not have coexisted in the hospitals with the hospitals run by the principal medical college and the nursing schools by the EDO (health)."

The apparent benefits of the administrative change are improvement in discipline and training. "The nursing teaching would improve vastly because of the involvement of teaching faculty of the medical colleges and enforcement of discipline rules would be more strict," said an instructor at one of the nursing schools.

Many believe otherwise. They say the handing over of the control back to the medical colleges is against the principles of devolution and it appears that things are moving back towards centralization. These nursing institutions had been placed under the district governments at the time of implementation of the devolution plan.