The Islamabad police arrested dozens of protesting doctors who took to the roads against non-recognition of their foreign degrees by the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) on Wednesday.
The protestors braved baton charge and water cannon but refused to budge from Srinagar Highway till their demand for recognising their degrees was not met.
Graduates holding degrees from foreign medical educational institutions staged a protest outside the PMC building. They expressed that the commission black-listed all medical universities of Kyrgyzstan.
They said that they had gone abroad to study as per the rules devised by the then Pakistan Medical and Dental Commission (PMDC). Now that the PMDC has been dissolved and PMC formed, new rules have been announced. This change in regulations has endangered the future of hundreds of doctors, the protestors said.
The demonstrators announced that they would not leave the site unless granted Registered Medical Practitioner (RMP) certificate from PMC. They accused the commission of misleading them every time.
The protesters said that PMC was not accepting foreign degrees of the doctors after September 2020 and this move had put the future of thousands of doctors at stake. They asserted that foreign varsities were approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The medical graduates said that all black-listed universities were registered by the erstwhile Pakistan Medical and Dental Commission (PMDC).
They contended that the degrees of varsities were accepted all across the world but Pakistan’s government was refusing it. They demanded to implement the rule on new admissions or else thousands of doctors would be left in the lurch. “There is no use of a degree when we cannot serve our country”, a protestor told The Express Tribune.
Further, the situation worsened when the protesters attempted to surround PMC’s building and blocked the Srinagar Highway.
Heavy contingents of the Islamabad police reached the site and opened up mouths of water cannons to disperse the protesters.
A number of doctors were arrested by the police after which the remaining ones scattered. However, they reassembled and continued their sit-in.
The sit-in finally ended when Islamabad Deputy Commissioner
Published in The Express Tribune, January 7th, 2021.
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