The plan of the State Medical Education department to recruit academic and other staff for the proposed Doon Medical College (DMC) received a setback with the State Government backtracking on its earlier decision to give the authority of appointments to a special committee comprising principals of three medical colleges of the State.
The Government has now decided that the newly constituted Medical Services Selection Board (MSSB) would select candidates for academic posts for the proposed medical colleges. It is learnt that the state government was under pressure from various quarters including Raj Bhawan which questioned the propriety of constituting a separate committee for recruitment of staff for Medical College. However the decision is bound to delay the process of recruitment for the medical college and could even mar the chances of permission from the Medical Council of India (MCI). A team of the MCI is expected to soon visit the college for grant of permission.
The medical experts believe that it would have been better if the process of selection of academic and other staff were complete before the visit of MCI team. They are of the view that the construction activity for the college is far from complete and with no recruitment of staff it would be very difficult for the authorities to get the nod of MCI for the medical college this year too.
The Director Doon medical college and officiating director Medical education department, Dr Ashutosh Syana accepted that it would now not possible to compete the process of recruitment within this month as planned earlier. He said that the Medical services recruitment board would do the appointments for the posts of Professors, Associate Professors and Assistant Professors now.
The department had earlier planned to conduct interviews – by the committee consisting of the of Principals of Doon, Haldwani and Srinagar Medical colleges- for Professors on December 21 while the dates for Associate Professor and Assistant Professor were slated on December 22 and 23 respectively. However the Principal of the college would do the appointments for the post of senior residents and residents for the medical college.
The beleaguered department is faced with arduous task of getting all important permission for the proposed medical college with a capacity of 150 students in I year MBBS course. Earlier the appointment of Principal too was delayed. The department is also facing a tough time to complete the construction activities for the medical college. The space constraints are forcing the government to construct the academic/ administration and associated 300 bed hospital in different locations of the city. The administrative and academic buildings are coming up at Dehra Khas area of the city (near Mahant Indiresh hospital) while the OPD block is coming up at Tehsil Chowk inside the city.
The Doon hospital and Doon women hospital would also be a part of the medical college. It is worth mentioning here that during its last visit the members of the MCI team had severely reprimanded the officials of medical education department on shoddy preparations of the medical college and wasting their precious time.