HYDERABAD, May 17: Postgraduate students at the Civil Hospital, Hyderabad, will work under the medical superintendent and will be subjected to disciplinary action , including cancellation of their admission, a source told this correspondent on Sunday.

He said this was decided in a meeting with Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences vice-chancellor Prof Jan Mohammad Memon in the chair. The medical superintendent of the hospital, Dr Hadi Bux Jatoi, and heads of different wards attended the meeting.

The meeting decided that not only the director concerned but the medical superintendent of the hospital would also monitor the working of students. The meeting decided that the students would perform all kinds of duties and they would have to sign the muster roll as by other employees of the hospital.

The decision followed numerous complaints against the students, who obtain admissions to the LUMHS from all over Sindh but considered themselves answerable to no one. They give preference to their classes, examinations and seminars over the service.

It was also decided that students would be assigned duties by the MS as it had been noted that they often choose wards on their own, leading to overcrowding in a particular discipline and badly affecting working of the other wards.

The meeting reviewed the old system, introduced earlier by the incumbent MS, about the presence of doctors of different wards in the OPD to determine the disease before referring him/her to any ward.

The MS said that medicines were available in the hospital and if doctor found anything short they should approach him. He strongly opposed the prescription of medicines to patients to be procured from outside.

He said that it was decided in the meeting that besides wards, registrars, professors, assistant and associate professors would remain in the hospital on shift-basis for patients' care.

He said that the Sindh government had approved Rs5 million for instruments and Rs20 million for equipment in the hospital. He said that Rs2 million had been provided for two new ambulances whereas bed lifts would be installed in neuro and orthopaedic ward building.