In order to discourage the campaign against the varsity and its vice-chancellor (VC), the University of Health Sciences (UHS) planned to launch a campaign against its employees and private medical colleges on Monday.
The UHS spokesman said that after the chief minister’s decision to take action against illegally operating and second-rate private medical colleges of the province and centralise their admission process, the administration of some of these colleges had launched a campaign against UHS and the Punjab government for the purpose of the character assassination of UHS officials.
UHS VC Malik Hussain Mubbashar said that these colleges were using former employees of the university to level false and fabricated allegations against the UHS and its administration. The UHS spokesman said that around 108 employees of the university working on contractual basis in grade one to 15 were terminated on disciplinary grounds last year by the board of governors of UHS after they resorted to violent protests for regularisation of their services and declined to accept a five-year contract offered to them under the university’s service statutes. He said that these employees filed two consecutive writ petitions in the Lahore High Court (LHC) against their termination orders which were dismissed by the court on August 17, 2010 and December 13, 2010.
The spokesman said that Dr Mubbashar was an eminent health professional with 40 years of teaching experience and appointed for the second term according to the provisions of the UHS Amendment Act 2009, on the recommendation of a search committee constituted by the Punjab government and all the legal requirements were fulfilled with regard to his reappointment. He said that allegations made against the UHS VC’s son were also baseless. Imtiaz Mubbashar had been a student of MBBS at Wah Medical College (WMC), Wah Cantt, a private sector institution affiliated with the UHS, from 2004 to 2009.
“Attendance and performance of a student in class tests and send-up examinations are internal matters of any college. The university accepts any information provided by the college authorities in this regard. In case of Imtiaz Mubbashar, the university never received any letter from college authorities about his short attendance or alleged poor performance in class tests. If Mubbashar’s attendance was short, or if his performance in send-up examinations was not up to the mark, it was the responsibility of concerned college authorities not to send his admission form to the university for annual examinations. On the contrary, the administration of WMC certified in his admission forms from first year to the final year, that Imtiaz had good moral conduct and that he attended at least two-third of all lectures delivered”, UHS spokesman said.
He said that the administration of the WMC was very stern in disciplinary matters and that the college was an Army Institute, run by the POF Board, comprising high ranked army officials. The spokesman said that WMC’s system was transparent and any discrimination was out of question and had Imtiaz Mubbashar shown poor academic performance during his stay in the college, the authorities would have taken strict disciplinary action against him. He said that no such disciplinary action had been reported and after the campaign launched by the private medical colleges, the university had sealed and saved all documents regarding Imtiaz Mubbashar including his solved answer books of all professional examinations for record.
Responding to another allegations, the spokesman said that VC UHS Dr Mubashar did not draw his salary as per MP-I scale approved by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan for the vice chancellors of public sector universities of the country. “He is drawing the salary of BPS-22 and receiving no extra allowances and other financial privileges”, he added.
The UHS spokesman maintained that according to section 37 of UHS Act 2009, all public and private medical/dental institutions of the Punjab were bound to affiliate with UHS. With centralized admissions in private medical colleges, merit would be ensured thus improving the quality of medical education and healthcare delivery system in Punjab, he added.
UHS spokesman said that private medical colleges violating the law would be proceeded against and poor but brilliant students of Punjab would be saved from the clutches of the private mafia.
