GUJRAT: The Punjab government’s Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education Department has proposed attachment of the Nawaz Sharif Medical College (NSMC), Gujrat, and Sargodha Medical College (SMC), Sargodha, with medical universities functioning under its control.

Since both the medical colleges have been functioning as the constituent colleges of the University of Gujrat (UoG) and University of Sargodha (UoS) since their inception in 2009-10 now the health department has proposed attaching the NSMC with the King Edward Medical University (KEMU) and the SMC with the Faisalabad Medical University (FMU).

The faculty, students as well as administrations of Gujrat and Sargodha districts had consistently been persuading the provincial government to change the status of the NSMC and SMC to autonomous institutions instead of keeping them as constituent colleges of the UoG and UoS due to serious financial, administrative, academic and training issues since their inception.

Both medical institutes are functioning as constituent colleges of UoG, UoS

The health department has forwarded the proposal to the Higher Education Department (HED) for further action and the HED has reportedly sought a report on the proposal from the management of UoG and UoS as well as from the district administrations.

In its letter to the registrars of the UoG and UoS, the HED said a detailed report was required on the proposal.

The Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Teaching Hospital (ABSTH) was declared as a teaching hospital of the NSMC as a temporary arrangement in 2014 till the establishment of college’s own teaching hospital and since then, a lot of serious issues related to functioning of the college and its teaching hospital surfaced, causing serious damage to the performance of the hospital as well as the standard of the academic activities of the college.

It is learnt that the acting principal of NSMC, Professor Dr Ateeq, in his response to the HED supported the proposal by terming it a good idea to attach the college with the KEMU whereas Gujrat Deputy Commissioner Dr Khurram Shahzad has also endorsed the proposal.

However, the UoG administration has reportedly expressed its serious reservations about the proposal. The sources said that the university had told the HED that it would put up the proposal in the next meeting of its Syndicate for discussion.

A senior official told Dawn the UoG administration was actually using the excuse of Syndicate meeting as a delaying tactic to keep the NSMC as its constituent college, saying that there had been no meeting of the syndicate for the almost one year. The university is yet to have a regular vice chancellor as Professor Dr Faheem Malik is currently serving as an acting VC.

Punjab Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Pervez Elahi in the assembly session a few months ago had passed the ruling for the ministers of health, higher education and law to separate both these medical colleges from the administrative control of their universities.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2019