The newly-elected top decision-making body of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) expressed displeasure at the organisation functioning without external or internal auditors and regretted that its financial matters were audited only three times in the last 10 years.
It also issued directions for the immediate advertising of the vacant posts of registrar and director (finance) for early appointments ‘on merit’.
The council also examined progress on the March 31 deadline set by it to address the delay in 2019 academic year admissions due to the new central induction programme and formed the Admission Board to be headed by Prof Dr Tariq Bhutta to directly supervise all remaining admissions by universities from April 1.
It directed all universities to send representatives to the main PMDC offices in Islamabad on April 1 with the entire admission records.
The Council warned that it won’t allow anyone to harm the academic year of the students and therefore, admissions would be completed on a war footing within the first week of April.
It asked all medical and dental colleges to send in their latest admission records by March 31.
The Council took serious notice of the delays caused in the granting of graduating doctors their provisional licences without which they are unable to start house job. The pending cases of provisional licences of 100 students of Federal Medical and Dental College and Avicenna Medical and Dental College of session 2013-14 which were long awaited were directed to be issued immediately.
These graduating doctors will be able to start their house job immediately.
The Council also decided to undertake a detailed review of the current regulatory structure of inspection of existing and applying medical and dental colleges to not only bring it in line with the best international practices and standards but streamline the existing cumbersome process and also consider the imposition of a review of standards of all colleges on a periodical basis to ensure best quality education for our future doctors.
The Council Committee has been entrusted with this job and will be working on an urgent basis to finalise the new structure. The Council also refused to accept requests by colleges for giving retrospective credit for a student who had dropped out in the past as it was noted that such practice essentially regularised a college having violated the maximum permissible strength in the past years and therefore, could not be allowed.
It requested the relevant Committees to ensure that while considering the cases of violations by any medical or dental college, the students should not be penalised by way of stopping their registrations etc. as was the case in the past.
The Council also issued necessary directions to fast track all pending equivalence cases of postgraduate and additional qualifications and also the many disciplinary cases.
