KARACHI, Nov 13: In Sindh there are fewer than a thousand part-II trainees of FCPS (Fellow of College of Physicians and Surgeons) who are not being paid their stipend. At the same time there are 300 vacant positions of House Officers in the Civil Hospital Karachi alone where these trainees can be absorbed provided the title of these posts are changed.
However, for the last more than one year the title of these positions have not been changed despite the express and repeated instructions of the governor. This was stated by the president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) at a press conference on Thursday evening.
Prof Sultan A. Farooqui said he was at a loss to understand why the title of these positions have not been altered so far. “I fail to comprehend the reasons for the non-compliance of the governor’s orders,” he told the journalists present.
The professor announced on the occasion that following some corrective steps taken by the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), CPSP had decided to reaffiliate it. An agreement had been signed to this effect between his institution and the JPMC on Nov 4.
Prof Farooqui said the CPSP had made it mandatory for all the affiliated tertiary-care hospitals, where the FCPS-II trainees were working, to pay a stipend of Rs6,210 per month which is equivalent to the salary payable to a grade-17 official. The institutions that did not make this payment had been disaffiliated.
After the reaffiliation of the JPMC, only some hospitals in Sindh — including the Civil Hospital, Karachi, the Peoples Medical College, Nawabshah, the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, and Lyari General Hospital, Karachi — remained disaffiliated. All these institutions were under the administrative control of the Sindh government, said Prof Farooqui.
The governments of Punjab, the NWFP and Balochistan, besides the federal government, had agreed in principle that the FCPS-II trainees should be paid a stipend of Rs6,210 per month. “Only the Sindh government has not taken the needed step in this regard.”
The professor said the non-payment of stipend to the trainees was highly objectionable. “It’s wrong to have the FCPS-II trainees go without a salary because he or she has to spend five years in the medical college, one year as a House Officer, and another four after passing the FCPS-I examinations.
“We may not pay them when they are in the medical college but we cannot have them do the postgraduate work without pay. You will agree with us that this cannot continue any longer. This should not continue.”
Elaborating, Prof Farooqui said in 2001 very few of the affiliated institutions paid stipend to the FCPS-II trainees. “But today most of the institutions pay the stipend.”
Asked whether or not the CPSP’s fee and other charges were on the higher side, Prof Farooqui said the total cost of a CPSP degree amounted to Rs70,000. “In return what they get is a qualification which is recognizable in countries like the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Nepal and Bangladesh.”
He told the journalists present that an MBBS degree even in the public-sector medical colleges cost something like Rs62,000. “You can now understand fully if our degrees are too costly or not.”
The CPSP had paid out Rs11 million in Qarz-i-Hasana to the needy postgraduate students. “No student has ever been deprived of our training simply because of lack of funds,” he claimed.
In December, said Prof Farooqui, the CPSP was going to launch a programme under which the librarians in the medical institutions would be imparted training. “In Pakistan we don’t have specialist medical librarians. This is going to change after we embark on this programme.”
President of CPSP said under this programme, which will be launched with the WHO’s collaboration, 2,000 online journals would be made available to the libraries in the country’s medical institutions. The WHO is going to provide $150,000 for this programme under which computers and other equipment would be provided to the medical institutions.