Pvt Medical colleges are crying foul of inspector Raj

Medical Council of India is on a War Path against ‘Ghosts’

New Delhi, March 30: Medical education regulator Medical Council of India (MCI) seems on a certain reform mission.

It has assumed the role of an ‘exorcist’, seeking to purge medical colleges of its ghosts, a nickname for those teachers who impersonate as permanent faculty in many colleges at the same time.

In the mean time, given the acute shortage of teaching doctors, private medical colleges are demanding allowing of visiting doctors and end to inspector Raj.

The body in its new avatar is showing no leniency towards erring medical colleges and erring doctors. The upshot – It has debarred three Telangana and four Andhra doctors from teaching for five years for resorting to such unethical means. They were found ‘ghosting’ as full time medical faculty in a Puducherry-based private medical institute.

Talking in no uncertain terms to Meditoall, editor, Dhananjay Kumar, a very influential source, calling all the shots in the regulatory body,  said MCI will be very ruthless while cleaning the prevailing muck from the medical education.

CBI has unearthed a big medical faculty scam in Puducherry’s Vinayaka Mission’s Medical College and hospital. More than hundred doctors are involved. The debarred doctors are part of this bigger scam. Debarred doctors include Dr. G Vahini, Md Jamaluddin Qadri and Md Iqbal ( all from Hyderabad). Those from AP are P Srinivas Prasad (Guntur), K Gopi Krishan (Nellore), Y Tanuja of Dargammitta (Nellore) and Ramanathan (Visakhapatnam). The MCI disciplinary committee has asked its state arm to implement its. They will also remain suspended for three months from practice. These doctors also defied regulator’s summons.
These doctors misled inspection team visiting the college, saying they were full time faculty members. The fact was they acted as ‘ghost’ faculty members.

To stem the rot, MCI has also directed all medical colleges in the country to introduce the radio frequency identification (RFID) system to track the movement of faculty members. During investigation, the CBI found that their names neither figured in the attendance register nor in the monthly salary statement maintained at that time for the regular staff. They were paid cash vouchers.

Top sources in MCI said this ghost faculty practice is rampant in all most all medical colleges in these two states but scam is so deftly on that MCI failed to detect it.  400 ghost teachers have also been found in four private medical colleges in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.