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NMC issues show cause notice to 5 Gujarat medical colleges
Just months after introducing the biometric attendance system for doctors cum medical teachers, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has sent show cause notices to several medical colleges it claims to have massive deficiencies in faculty.
At least five Medical Colleges and Hospitals (MCHs) in Gujarat have received these show cause notices along with warnings of reduction in MBBS seats and high monetary penalties, due to severe shortages of medical teachers, tutors and resident doctors across departments.
While Mirror has time and again highlighted how the Gujarat government’s contractual recruitment policies have impacted medical education, requiring the State to provide incentivised salaries of up to Rs 5 lakh per month to doctors to join peripheral medical colleges, the NMC’s show cause notices appear to have struck a raw nerve.
Staff shortage
Mirror has learned that the NMC has highlighted staff deficiency in 17 of 20 departments of GMERS Sola MCH in Ahmedabad. Similarly, doctors in 18 of 20 departments of GMERS Gandhinagar MCH are said to have less than 75% attendance. Notably, while there are actual deficiencies in 3 of 20 departments at NCH Surat, the show cause notice by NMC shows deficiency in 14 departments. Notices have also been received by GMERS Porbandar MCH and GMERS Gotri MCH.
The matter of staff attendance has become a matter of contention with doctors claiming the NMC has not taken into account several local factors. Officials in Gujarat said that the basic contention is that the NMC has counted biometric attendance for only two months – January and February 2024 – for the current evaluation.
“How can the attendance be counted based on just two months? The doctor may have been present through the year but has taken sanctioned leave in January or February. This may be due to any number of reasons,” said a senior official.
Missing doctors or missed punches?
Apart from sanctioned leaves, other factors to be considered for absence of doctors from their posts, range from college transfers, court presence, community work, state holidays, examinations, inspections, university work, presence at health department, seminars and conferences, as well as having to go on medical bandobast for VIPs.
A Gujarat health department official explained the NMC wants deans to be more robust in uploading reasons for absence of medical teachers or of single punches in the biometric system, so that leaves can be processed properly at the central level. It appears that the NMC wants to make sure that doctors are on duty and not engaged elsewhere or in private practice during duty hours or aren’t ghost faculty.
Principal Secretary of Health, Dhananjay Dwivedi, who was on a visit to GMERS Gotri MCH in Vadodara on Thursday, one of the colleges that have received a show cause notice, remained unavailable for comment.
Consequences
Since the NMC has now given these MCHs time of another two months to check their attendance, Deans are cancelling all leaves sought by the doctors, leaving them exasperated at the bureaucratic mess between the State and the Centre. Ahmedabad Mirror