Shortage of faculty in PG medical courses to affect students

Hyderabad: The fate of dozens of medicine postgraduate students is left hanging in the air with the Medical Council of India (MCI) preparing to take action over the shortage of faculty in Osmania and Kakatiya medical colleges in Telangana.

The MCI is likely pull up 10 private and government institutions for running the colleges with several defects. During its assessment in May this year MCI pointed out the defects and asked the management to rectify.

MCI, listed out the shortage of 19 faculty numbers in MD (Social & Preventive Medicine) and MD (Community Medicine) and MD (Physiology) courses in
Osmania Medical College and Kakatiya Medical College.

MCI had earlier permitted to increase the intake of MD seats in the three department from five to 11 but due to the deficiencies the extra seats are likely to be cancelled.

Dr S B Siwach, Chairman of MCI's postgraduate medical education committee held several meeting between August 11 and September 4 in Delhi where he discussed the violations done by these colleges and running the course without having insufficient faculty, not paying stipend to medicos, lack of proper infrastructure. Having so many loopholes, MCI stated that colleges cannot go ahead with the increased intake of students for the next academic year starting from March 2016.

Dr G Srinivas, President of Telangana Junior Doctors' Association says that its a wake-up call for the Telanagana government and the management needs to act immediately before it is further delayed.

In five governmnet medical colleges in last two years 400 vacancies of faculty positions have fallen vacant. If the governmnet fails to act now, we will run a risk of facing de-recognition or reduction of existing seats, he said.

However, Dr M Ramani, Director of Medical Education, clarified that the delay in recruitment was due to the bifurcation of medical faculty between the two states. But now they are going ahead with the recruitment process before it creates a major setback to the medical colleges.

On the other hand, eight private colleges offering 40 PG medical courses could also face the same problem. If these are not rectified at least 50 to 60 medical seats will be at stake.

Dr K Ramesh Reddy, MCI member asserts that certain things can be overlooked but serious issue like non payment of stipend to medicos and faculty shortage have to be addressed.