LAHORE: A Canadian MBBS student of a public medical college in Lahore has announced quitting her studies in Pakistan over bitter experiences, challenges and unfriendly environment she had to face right from her ‘classroom to the washroom’ in the hostels where she was offered a room to share with too many other students.

Anum Qaisar had got ‘overseas admission’ to the Government Ameeruddin Medical College (AMC) in February 2023. Established in 2012, the AMC is attached with the Lahore General Hospital, its teaching hospital.

In her two-page written complaint, emailed to the PGMI/AMC Principal Prof Alfreed Zafar, Anum exposes claims of all the so-called facilities the institute provides to the overseas and other students, including the official accommodation. Most of the problems she has pointed out in her complaint about the AMC are also the general issues found in educational institutes across the country.

“I am writing to share my experience as a first-year MBBS student at the AMC and bringing to your attention to the extremely dreadful experience, especially, I have had during the past month of March which has not only taken a significant toll on my mental and physical health and well-being but also left me immensely disheartened by the country I would have called home in Canada,” Anum says in her complaint.

Tell-all complaint exposes deep-rooted problems normalised in the system

She had come to Pakistan committed to pursue the degree after putting in two years of efforts into researching, applying and studying for the admission test, reads the email.

“However, after the discouragement I faced, I was left with no choice but to unfortunately and with a heavy heart withdraw from my admission”.

As an overseas student, Anum Qaisar adds, she had no option but to stay in the hostel provided by the college for the sake of her safety as living alone would not be ideal, especially for someone unfamiliar with the culture and way of life in Pakistan. She complains that the living conditions and lack of facilities in the hostel caused a great deal of frustration for her and it was a daily struggle to do simple and basic tasks. Firstly, it’s an apartment-style building, forcing the overcrowding of the female students, she says.

“In my flat, there were 11 girls residing in a small two-bedroom apartment,” she writes, revealing the scarcity of the accommodation facility.

Giving appalling details, she further says three girls were in one room, four in the other and the remaining four were given no choice but to stay in the lounge until there was any vacancy to be found. For Anum, the overcrowding is not only the unethical as it raises many sanitation and health concerns but also causes extreme distress and psychological torment of having only a small space to oneself with no privacy.

She makes more shocking revelations in her complaint, saying only two attached washrooms were available in the apartment for 11 girls. Due to overcrowding, in the morning sometimes one had no choice but to get ready using the kitchen sink and get dressed in the kitchen. In addition, given the number of occupants in the apartment, the cleanliness of washrooms was difficult to maintain, posing risk of insanitation-related illnesses.

The AMC hostel is in a rented building, in the middle of a plaza, at a 45-minute drive from Anum’s college campus. She found the transport system of the college equally awful as there were only two buses, one for boys and other for girls, but they were not enough to accommodate the number of students for the entire ride.

She says the college charged the meal fee but there was no meal plan or the mess system, prompting the students to purchase food from the market or from any other site at their own risk.

“As a result, I suffered from a severe case of food poisoning and remained unable to consume anything for three days.” The unhygienic environment and housekeeping service remained a matter of serious concern for the complainant as, instead of using cleaning agents, the employees used simple water to mop the floor.

The student referred to the serious security issues also. “Our security included a barrel bolt lock along with a table placed in front of the door to ensure it stayed closed.”

Regarding the campus, Anum complains that the college has no building of its own while it has falling infrastructure, broken furniture, congestion of space and non-inclusive seating area preventing students from being able to see the board.

“The medical teachers who were supposed to be our mentors and source of guidance during our journey were extremely degrading, disrespectful towards all the students,” she points out, adding that there was no interactive learning as stated by the UHS curriculum and the teachers would read off the slides instead of discussing or teaching them. Giving an example of disrespect, she writes, when students asked a teacher to speak up in a crowded classroom, instead of making adjustments, the teacher’s response was to get our ears checked by the ENT doctor.

Anum complains against gender discrimination openly in favour of the boys.

Regarding the system and teaching, she mentions the common use of past papers, copied and pasted and absence of open discussion while there are no professors to be found for half of the classes such as Islamiat, Professionalism, Ethics, Research and Leadership Studies (PERLs) and Clinical Skills in Medicine (CSIM).

Pointing out all the issues, Anum says she was left with no option but to go back to Canada, leaving the MBBS degree behind for the sake of her mental and physical health. She requests the authorities concerned to take notice and address the issues for the sake of the future of her fellow students.

PGMI/AMC Principal Prof Alfreed Zafar told Dawn the administration tried to contact Anum to come back and resume her education but she neither responded to the requests sent to her through email nor attended the mobile phone calls.

“We have constituted a committee of senior medics to address the core issues she has highlighted,” he claims, adding that the institute is trying to get a new designated hostel building for the girl students. He says the hostel is located in the Nishtar Colony while the college is near the Jail Road.

Efforts are being made to shift new hostel near the college, the PGMI principal says, adding that he has also taken up matter with the Punjab health minister to expedite the establishment of proposed campus of the institute at 2,800-kanal land near Kahna which would house all related buildings, including the campus, hostel and 500-bed hospital.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2023