Exam results: As authorities ignore protests, Multan med students intensify strike

Say they were assured results will be cancelled and papers rechecked immediately but neither has been done.

MULTAN: Third-year medical students, disgruntled at the lack of response from authorities, have announced that they will intensify their protest in Multan against the University of Health Sciences.

Students claimed that they were assured that results will be cancelled and papers rechecked immediately, but neither has been done.

“A similar incident happened with fourth-year medical students when we were in our first year,” said Wajahat Saleem, a student of Nishtar Medical College. “UHS constituted a committee, following severe student protests, but it only wasted time and in the end, upheld the previous decision. Students were unable to even appear for supplementary examinations.”

Our objective is not to create havoc, Saleem said, but results should be revised and a fair decision should be made after hearing students’ grievances.

Nayab Faheem, another student at the college, said that the Pharmacology paper this year was the same as last year’s. “Even the date printed on [this year’s] paper was last year’s because the UHS suspected that the paper had been leaked,” he said, while appreciating steps that the UHS had taken against cheating.

Faheem said that some questions on the Pathology paper were not from the course and so students should be given grace marks.

Some students, including the women who had turned up for the protest, demanded that the UHS should clarify its strategy on the matter and not waste time of students who were preparing for supplementary examinations as they will fail a year if they don’t take the examinations again.