LARKANA, Jan 22 Future of the students of paramedics institute and nursing school hangs in the balance as the degree they receive at the end of three-year course carries no value since the Pakistan Nursing Council, Islamabad has not yet registered their institute.

The students who held a demonstration here on Thursday under the aegis of students` action committee told Dawn that registering the nursing school was the sole responsibility of the Nursing Board but it had not yet fulfilled it.

Under the circumstances, future of 270 trained male nurses was in jeopardy because the Nursing Council did not recognise the degrees issued by the institute, they said.

They alleged that the director of Nursing Sindh had placed advertisements in newspapers for admissions despite knowing that the Nursing Council had not included the institute`s name in the list of registered schools.

They said that four years had passed but the Nursing Board had still not been able to get the school registered though it had continued process for admissions on a regular basis.

They appealed to the president, prime minister, and MNA Faryal Talpur who had been elected from a Larkana constituency to order registration of the school and threatened to take extreme steps if the school was not registered.

Since the establishment of Nursing School in 2004, two batches of 140 and 130 students had passed out in 2007 and 2008 and the school had intake from Larkana, Nawabshah, Noshehro Feroze, Khairpur Mir`s, Sukkur, Shikarpur, Dadu and Qambar-Shahdadkot districts, they said.

They said that they were awarded admission after advertisements in newspapers placed by the director of Nursing Karachi and paid all fees including registration fee to the Nursing Council.

PROTEST A large number of sacked sanitary workers of Larkana taluka council observed token hunger strike outside the press club on Thursday in protest against their dismissal.