The Punjab government has taken many steps that effect people badly in one way or another. Obviously those steps were taken and the voices raised, were discarded like last year’s newspapers. Nobody cared enough to make even the smallest of amends with the unemployed, the effected in anyway. Now, however, things are taking a turn for the worst.
The Government has made many arbitrary changes to the MCAT exam this year which have badly affected the students. These include changing the date of the exam, the format of the exam, the passing percentage and the weightage accorded to the exam in admissions criteria of medical colleges. The MCAT exam usually takes place in September. That was the norm. But this year, when all of us were expecting to have nearly 3 months for preparation, we were informed after our F.Sc / A’ levels exams in June that MCAT will take place on the 18th of July. Then, it was changed again to the 20th of July. Many hard-working students fell victim to this arbitrariness and fell through the cracks of mismanagement. They have not been able to get admissions into good medical colleges and their futures have been jeopardised. Why should the students pay for the actions of the authorities and the faulty decisions of UHS, PMDC and the government? And why do medical students have to go through MCAT and the shortage of seats when the engineering students got more than sufficient time for ECAT and more than enough seats?
The Students of this country, the general masses in fact, have suffered too much already on the hands of the self-centered Punjab government and its decisions to change things when the only thing that is changing is the number of people getting affected badly by their policies (which for their information isnt dwindling, in case they got curious).
Now I plead to the Government, PMDC, UHS and the general masses to consider the problems that the students are in and if they want to apply these policies, they should apply them next year with a warning beforehand so the students can prepare themselves in that way. My fellow students’ protests were not heard. I can only hope that this message would reach the authorities and they would heed these comments and do what is best for us. At this stage, we are the ones that are going through the problems. It’s easy to change a policy, but it isnt that easy to do it when the future of thousands of young minds is at stake. Since we all know that policies like these are supposed to be prospective and not retrospective.
FAHAD ISMAIL
Lahore
