Unrecognised degrees

Sindh Pharmacy Council, which plays a pivotal role in the registration process, has been lying dormant for 13 years

Of the 19 departments and institutions of pharmacy in public and private sector universities in Sindh, only seven are registered with the Pharmacy Council of Pakistan (PPCP) while the rest have been functioning without registration. As a result, thousands of students pursuing or having completed the Doctor of Pharmacy Degree are facing an uncertain future. The 12 departments and institutions have been functioning merely on the basis of NOCs issued by the federal government. The degrees obtained from unregistered institutions remain a worthless piece of paper. Unrecognised qualification effectively bars grads rom jobs. Private firms that hire them deduct their salaries for want of registration.

Some of the notable unregistered institutions are the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at Peoples University of Health Science for Women (PUMHSW), Shaheed Benazirabad, the pharmacy department at Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Hyderabad, and the pharmacy department of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, Medical University, Larkana. A student, who has obtained a Pharma-D degree from the PUHMSW, was among the 50 students of the first batch, from the university established in 2014. She says students have been kept in the dark that the institute is not registered with the PPCP. For the past seven years, the university administration had been promising that representatives of the PPCP would soon inspect the institute and grant recognition.

The criteria for recognition include the appointment of registered faculty, the institute’s affiliation with a university, a library, proper labs, and financial viability. The director of the PUMHSW says the institute fulfils the criteria, but the PPCP’s current body was dissolved last year, and the issue cannot be resolved until a new body is set up. The Sindh Pharmacy Council, which played a pivotal role in the registration process, has been lying dormant for the past 13 years. This gives an idea how mismanaged are educational affairs in Sindh.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2020.

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