LAHORE, March 8: The Punjab government has withdrawn the condition of depositing full fee in advance in bank by local and overseas students seeking admission to medical colleges in the province on self-finance basis.

The Punjab health department had created 20 additional seats in each public sector medical college to admit students on self-finance basis in a bid to generate resources.

Every local and overseas Pakistani student was required to deposit Rs1 million and $40,000, respectively, in bank as a guarantee besides Rs250,000 and $10,000 as first year tuition fee.

The college would deduct next years' fee from the guarantee money. Though the fee rate for Pakistani students was uniform in all medical colleges, the annual fee for overseas Pakistani students at King Edward, Fatima Jinnah and Allama Iqbal medical colleges was fixed at $10,000; at Rawalpindi and Nishtar colleges $7,000 and at Punjab and Quaid-i-Azam colleges $5,000. However, the issue of bank guarantee drew strong criticism from the very outset as most of the parents could not afford to deposit such a huge sum.

They criticized the decision and made representations before the health department requesting it to withdraw the condition. They said the colleges should charge fee on annual basis instead of total fee at one time.

The department held discussions and recommended to the Punjab chief minister to review and give a favourable decision. Consequently, the chief minister issued a notification here on Monday.