Merging Jinnah hospital and SMC: Confused Sindh Medical College students call off protest for now

Say they want ‘hard facts’ on the matter.

KARACHI: Students of Sindh Medical College (SMC) called off their protest on Saturday against the elevation of their college to the status of a university, saying that they felt as if they “were being played by both the alumni (pushing for the college’s elevation) and the SMC administration.”

“We had full plans for a protest today, in fact, we had everyone gathered as well but we realised there is a great deal of confusion about what exactly we were protesting for,” admitted Mustafa, a third-year student. “The administration initially told us that we would no longer be awarded a Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) degree should SMC be elevated.” He explained that now the administration and the SMC alumni were saying students currently enrolled under DUHS will be given its degree and the elevation would affect future students. “All resistance has been postponed till we gather the hard facts.”

Another third-year SMC student, Ahmer, wisely pointed out that the confusion is being caused because no one has yet to make public a concrete road map of how SMC will be made a university and what kind of impact such a decision could have on those enrolled and future students.

When asked if the protest would be called off if the current SMC student body would be awarded DUHS degrees, the answer was an immediate “yes”. However, some students expressed interest in the administration and management being changed to “affect the standard of education and examinations at SMC.” Either way, the chairman for the SMC alumni, Dr Sameer Qureshi, will be addressing students on Monday to clarify the matter and discuss possible options for a course of action.

“Things are developing so quickly but the issue is still very liquid,” said Qureshi, who will be coordinating between the students and the alumni.

“Of course, we do not want to cause any harm to the student’s flow of studies, so we will hear their concerns and try to solve their problems,” he told The Express Tribune. Presently, third-year students are leading the charge on the protest as the fourth year is on vacation and final year is busy with examinations.

Protests and discussions aside, SMC cannot be elevated to a university and subsequently disaffiliated with DUHS unless the matter is officially taken up legally.

Meanwhile, Jinnah hospital distanced itself from the claims being made by the SMC alumni. The chairperson for the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) academic counsel, Professor S M Tariq Rafi, issued a statement after an emergency meeting. “It was unanimously agreed that the academic counsel of JPMC has never agreed on Sindh Medical University [merging] with JPMC,” it said. “Our stand has always been to upgrade JPMC to Jinnah University of Health Sciences with a federal charter and hence there is no change in our stance. This fact has been misrepresented by the SMC alumni.”

On allegations that SMC students were treated as “stepchildren” by the JPMC teaching faculty, where they undergo their clinical study, the statement said that this was “not a truth”, adding that the SMC alumni in question also achieved success due to the “training and teaching imparted at JPMC”.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2011.