Exam anger: Medical students storm UHS, thrash guards over MBBS results

UHS spokesman says no compromise with failed students, protestors threaten ‘massive strike’.

LAHORE:

Medical students stormed the University of Health Sciences (UHS), broke the gate and beat up the guards to protest against “strict marking” in the MBBS exams on Thursday.

Some 200 students from various medical colleges who had failed the exams, led by a Young Doctors Association (YDA) faction headed by Dr Hamid Butt, broke into the campus at 10am and stayed there till 8pm, when Health Department officials finally persuaded them to end their protest.

University guards Ramzan and Hasnain were badly beaten by the students.

“The Health Department has agreed to form a separate committee which will judge our papers according to the Difficulty Index. We have given them an ultimatum of six days ... otherwise we do a massive strike,” said Farhan Ali Siddiq, a student of the Punjab Medical College, Faisalabad.

Talal, a student of the Services Institute of Medical Sciences, said that the protesting students had been led by Dr Butt of the YDA.

A UHS spokesman said that the university would not compromise with the students. “Compensating these students is out of the question. We will not revise our results,” he said.

He said the vice chancellor had remained locked in his room for four hours during the protest. “The attitude and behaviour of the medical students was absolutely against the values and ethics of medicine. The protest was pre-planned and violent,” he said.

He said the UHS had already set up separate subject committees to assess the students’ complaint that some of the exam had been from material on the syllabus. They had reviewed the questions and found they were from the syllabus, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 9^th, 2012.