NEB exam candidates demand registration

ISLAMABAD: Doctors who have received their medical training abroad staged a protest outside the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). They blocked the road outside the council’s offices and demanded that the regulator register them.

The protesters said that the apex regulator of medical education and practitioners in the country had stopped their registrations for the past eight months.

They contended that all those foreign degree holders who have also cleared tests from the National Examination Board (NEB), must be registered by the council and that they should be provided with the Registered Medical Practitioner (RMP) licence within a month.

When The Express Tribune contacted PMDC Spokesperson Hina Kiyani for her stance on the issue, she contended that a second examination of the NEB, had been conducted by the now-defunct Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC). Moreover, she said that the Islamabad High Court - while dissolving the PMC had declared all work conducted by the commission as illegal.

She added that several foreign graduates were allowed to sit the NEB exam without obtaining a permission letter - which is mandatory. Moreover, she said that many doctors appeared in the exam without getting their MBBs or BDS degrees verified.

Kiyani pointed out that per PMDC rules, only those foreign degree holders were eligible to sit in the exam whose degrees were verified, adding that they are probing at least four cases where candidates submitted fake documents.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2020.