Sindh consider lowering minimum pass per cent to qualify MDCAT

KARACHI: The Sindh government has recently started considering the option of lowering the Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test's (MDCAT) minimum passing grade of 65 per cent. This announcement came in light of the situation last year where the seats in Medical and Dental institutes in the province went vacant following the MDCAT. 

Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, Health Minister, Sindh, disclosed this while addressing a press conference at the Sindh Assembly building. Saeed Ghani, Provincial Minister of Information, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, Provincial Minister for Local Governments, and Qasim Siraj Soomro, Parliamentary Secretary for Health in Sindh Assembly, were all present.

The Health Minister informed the media that the second option under consideration was that the province should conduct an MDCAT of its own for medical and dental institutes. 

"The Sindh government had been forced to consider such options as a last resort.", she went on to say, even if exercising such an option would displease the relevant federal health authorities. There was also the chance that the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) wouldn't recognise the system of a provincial admission test. She added that the law and constitution fully empower the province to devise its policy and test system to offer admissions to medical and dental colleges in the region.

Dr Pechuho said owing to the same unfair system, 492 out of 600 seats for Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) available in the province had remained vacant last year. Similarly, private medical colleges had 2,600 seats available for Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS), and 30 per cent of them went vacant. Preparations of the merit list by the province itself would allow them to fill all the seats available instead of relying on inviting students to take admission from other provinces.  

She said the province's private medical and dental colleges had been left with no choice but to offer admissions to students from other provinces to fill these seats. This could lead to a shortage of doctors and dentists in Sindh after four to five years, as these non-native students would go back to their home provinces to practice their profession after completing their education in Sindh.

"We shouldn't be compelled and pushed to the wall as it is the matter concerning the future of our children as merely acting as a silent spectator in this issue is not an option for us," she insists. "The candidates who had appeared in the MDCAT were dissatisfied, not just in Sindh but all over the country. Students of other provinces have been protesting against the test system as well."

The PMC had pursued an ill-advised policy of increasing the minimum pass percentage of MDCAT from 60 per cent to 65 per cent, despite students' education in colleges having been phenomenally affected during the last year due to COVID-19 lockdowns, she pointed out. She said that MDCAT was not conducted on a single day as it was a month-long exercise as all the candidates didn't get a level playing field while appearing in the pre-admission examination. The content of the MDCAT was based on the federal and Punjab's syllabi, and Sindh's curriculum had not been considered while preparing the questions.  

She recalled that the PMC was imposed on the country through an ordinance without all the federating unit's consent in Pakistan. And that PMC had lost all its utility when it had failed to understand the problems of the concerned students as it shouldn't conduct the admission examination when it could not properly conduct the test. 

"This unjust decision has darkened the future of our children as their academic career is at stake. We have written the letter to them to make them understand the genuine problems of our students, but they have adamant on this issue," said the Health Minister while talking about the PMC officials.  

She appealed to the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation, & Coordination to promptly review the MDCAT situation to protect the student's academic future.

"Since the time PMC has come into existence, the hardships of doctors and students in the country have increased while the federating units are also no closer to each other," she concluded, "The PMC carried no benefit as it had failed to serve the nation."