Public medical colleges: Disapproving CM eyes seats for foreign students

Committee set up to explore ‘justification for self-finance seats for foreign students’.

LAHORE:

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has set up a committee to examine the justification for having self-finance seats for foreign students in public medical and dental colleges.

According to a Health Department notification, the nine-member committee will make a report on the subject and submit it to the chief minister. It consists of the local government minister, the health minister, two MPAs, the advocate general, the Planning and Development Board chairman, the law secretary, the health secretary and the University of Health Sciences vice chancellor.

The committee is to determine “whether there is any administrative or legal basis to have a self finance scheme for foreign students. It remains to be seen whether the definition of foreign student includes only those students who come through the Economic Affair Division and the Higher Education Commission under the International Student Exchange Programme, or also those who are merely passport holders of a country other than Pakistan”, reads the notification.

There are currently 62 seats for foreign nationals from 32 “friendly” countries in the public medical and dental colleges in the Punjab. The fee for these students is approximately $10,000 (Rs1.06 million) annually. These students are admitted through the Economic Affairs Division. The merit score for these seats is much lower than for open seats.

A senior Health Department official said that the chief minister had decided to task the committee with looking at foreign students after the department sent the CM’s Secretariat a summary about the fee structure at Shaikh Zayed Medical and Dental College (SKZMC).

The institution recently passed from federal to provincial government control, raising the problem of whether it could continue to charge its students a much higher fee than the other public medical colleges in the Punjab.

“The summary proposed that the fee at 90 open merit seats should be set at Rs200,000 annually, while the college could charge more for 10 self-finance seats. The chief minister ... formed a committee to look into self-finance seats for foreign nationals. The issue of the fee structure at SKZMC is still to be resolved,” the Health Department official said.

The committee has also been tasked with looking at “whether there is any clear cut legal justification or judicial stipulation to impose the annual fee at Rs200,000 instead of Rs400,000; whether reasonable and adequate legal remedies have been sought against the judicial orders of imposition of fee at Rs200,000 at SKZMC; [and] whether the proposal to admit 90 students at Rs200,000 per year is line with the chief minister’s policy of merit, transparency, equity, quality of opportunity and justice. The option of bringing down the fee for students admitted on open merit at SKZMC to what is chargeable in other public medical colleges in the Punjab may also be considered,” the notification reads. “A future course of action proposed on the principles of justice equity, and fairness may be suggested.”

The first meeting of the committee has been scheduled for September 20.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2013.