Medical colleges grapple with delays due to MDCAT repercussions

Academic calendar disturbed during pandemic, suffered mismanagement in 2022, 2023

KARACHI:

The start of the upcoming academic session in medical and dental colleges and universities of Sindh will experience a delay of approximately three months. This delay has been necessitated by the need to reconduct the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT), according to senior officials.

According to sources, if MDCAT 2023 is conducted on November 19, it will require approximately three more months for the interview stage, handling student objections to the merit list, and related processes after the results are declared.

The disruption in the academic calendar can be traced back to multiple factors. Initially, the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021 disrupted the schedule. Subsequently, issues arose due to mismanagement during the examination process in 2022 and 2023.

Before the pandemic, the academic sessions for medical and dental colleges and universities in Sindh and globally typically commenced between the last week of December and the first week of January. However, the Covid pandemic led to a shift in this schedule, causing the academic sessions to start between February and March in the medical and dental colleges of Pakistan.

Read Health Dept suggests re-conduct of MDCAT on Nov 19

To address the delays in commencing the sessions, consultations were held with the provincial and federal health departments, as well as the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). It was decided to conduct MDCAT 2023 on September 10 this year.

However, the MDCAT exam on September 10 faced issues such as irregularities and paper leakage. The caretaker provincial government formed an inquiry committee to investigate the matter. Based on the committee's recommendations, the caretaker, Chief Minister of Sindh, Justice (Rtd) Maqbool Baqar, cancelled the MDCAT 2023 results and ordered a re-conduct of the examination, causing inconvenience to over 40,000 candidates.

The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) spokesperson is working diligently to ensure a well-planned and transparent MDCAT examination.

Professor Amjad Siraj Memon, Vice Chancellor of Jinnah Sindh Medical University and a member of PMDC Sindh, highlighted that the academic session schedules of medical colleges were disrupted due to the Covid pandemic, creating a gap between Pakistan and other countries. The aim of holding MDCAT earlier than November was to minimise this delay and restore the pre-pandemic schedule.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2023.