LAHORE, June 8: The Punjab Assembly on Thursday was told that around 500 vacancies of professors, associate professors, assistant professors and senior registrars were lying vacant in 10 medical colleges in the province.

Responding to a question by Syed Ehsanullah Waqas of the MMA, Health Minister Tahir Javed, while agreeing to the assertion that it had affected the medical education badly in the province, said the government inherited this situation.

The Public Service Commission had stopped recruiting educationist doctors in 1996 and has since not added doctors to education cadre. It has naturally badly affected medical education in the province. The government, alive to the problem, has now decided to regularise all doctors so that they could work with security and plan their career.

The government, he said, has also asked Public Service Commission to fill vacancies of over 245 assistant professors. The government was also considering sending vacancies of professors and associate professors to the PSC. “Once all these vacancies are filled, medical education in the province could improve tremendously.”

The government, he said, was in the process of filling all these vacancies as urgently as possible so that education did not suffer.