PMC waives NLE requirement for graduates

Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) has started issuing permanent Registration Certificates from February 8 to doctors who graduated from Pakistani medical and dental colleges, without the requirement of National Licensing Examination (NLE).

A news release issued on Friday said as per previous law of PMC the local graduates had to appear and pass the NLE exam before getting their permanent registration. Under PMC law, NLE was undertaken from the doctors graduated from Pakistan's approved medical and dental colleges which was highly criticised by doctors community throughout the country.

Protests and demonstrations were held by different doctors' forums and organisations at different levels, and the government was appealed repeatedly to withdraw the law, introduced by the PTI government.

In this regard, an interactive PMDC online portal has been launched to facilitate doctors throughout the country. On the first day, 1,500 registration certificates were issued while the regulator has also started issuing good standing certificates and renewals. PMDC informed all the local graduates, which are approximately more than 10,000 waiting for their permanent registration to apply online for registration. These graduates waited for quite a long time to get themselves registered but failed due to the rigid rules imposed by PMC.

PMDC Registrar Dr Suleman Ahmed said that one of the objectives of the regulator was to make the registration portal in a way that was easy to navigate and was user-friendly. He added that PMDC after its promulgation ensured that the registration portal should be accurate enough and must be able to secure storage of confidential information of doctors and to develop a system that provided a secure payment system for application fees, and a system for tracking and managing applications.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2023.