The National Medical Commission (NMC) has issued show-cause notices to all government medical colleges, including BJ Medical College in Pune.
An exception has been made for Nagpur’s Indira Gandhi Medical College. The notices were issued due to vacant professor and staff positions, along with inadequate infrastructure.
If government medical colleges fail to provide satisfactory replies within seven days of receiving the notices, they will be fined ₹1 crore for each deficiency. Failure to pay the penalty may lead to cancellation of the permission granted by the NMC. However, experts have termed this a routine procedure by the commission.
Recently, NMC squads have visited and examined the facilities available at the colleges. They found that colleges do not have enough staff/faculty and facilities. Shockingly, a few colleges have less than 50 pc faculty.
There is only 18 pc faculty at the Government Medical College in Ratnagiri. A few colleges do not have sufficient numbers of OTs, cadavers and laboratories.
Dr Eknath Pawar, Dean, BJ Medical College, told Pune Times Mirror, “NMC sends show cause notices to government medical colleges every year for various deficiencies like insufficient staff. Staff gets transferred, retired, and promoted. There are vacancies. We have received the show cause notice for insufficient staff and for a few more reasons. We are in the process of sending a reply to the NMC.”
Recently, the Bharatratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College, Pune also received show cause notice for deficiency in faculty/residents/tutor, occupancy, number of cadavers, number of major and minor OTs, and lesser histopathology and cryptopathology, and clinical pathology samples.
Dr Sidhartha Dhende, former Deputy Mayor, recently raised the issue about the Bharatratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College, Pune. “There are not enough faculty, clinical staff, no laboratory, no hostel for students. The college is yet to get permission for the fourth year. No wonder, the NMC has sent it the show cause notice.
“Poor students take admission to government medical colleges to fulfil their dream to become doctors. But what kind of doctors are we producing without sufficient faculty and infrastructure?”
Experts emphasized that medical colleges must now prioritize the recruitment of staff, including faculty, and urgently develop the required infrastructure. Failure to do so could negatively impact the students studying in these institutions.
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