Raise unlikely in retirement age of medical teachers

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 20

Four medical colleges are in the pipeline in the state. The state government is facing shortage of senior faculty but is not inclined to increase the retirement age of teachers from 62 to 65 years.

The government is in a fix over the issue due to clash of interests between the retiring and junior faculty. Now it is contemplating reviving the old proposal to raise the retirement age of teachers willing to serve in the new colleges, with the exclusion of medical administrator.

The matter is expected to be discussed in the next meeting of the Cabinet as the first inspection of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for allowing admission for 100 MBBS seats in each college is likely to take place in January 2016.

As least one senior professor is required in each department, 100 professors would have to be recruited in four colleges before the inspection and in case the retiring teachers spurn the offer of the government, providing adequate faculty would be a daunting task.

The Central government has sanctioned Medical colleges at Chamba, Nahan and Hamirpur, while modalities are being worked out for handing over the ESI medical college to Himachal as Union labour Ministry had declined to run the medical college. The Union government had spent Rs 700 crore in building the infrastructure of the colleges and it wants the state government to refund the expenditure incurred.

The government had decided to upgrade the zonal hospitals at Chamba, Nahan and Hamirpur as Medical Colleges and rename them after Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru, Dr Yashwant Singh Parmar and Dr S. Radhakrishanan, respectively.

The state government had already submitted the detailed projects in respect of three hospitals for initiating the process for issuing letter of permission for admissions to the first batch of MBBS and the Hospital Services Consultancy Corporation (HSCC), a government undertaking, had recently approved the proposals for Chamba and Nahan colleges.

The HSCC had already floated tenders. Construction work of Nahan College has already commenced while the tenders for Chamba College had been finalised. However, the process in respect of Hamirpur College was delayed due to some problems in land acquisition.

Two government medical college — Indira Gandhi Medical College at Shimla and Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College at Tanda in Kangra — are already functional in the state. Even these colleges are facing staff crunch for post-graduate faculty.

Fearing exodus of senior faculty leading to shortage of professors, the state government had increased the retirement of age of medical teachers from 58 to 62 in January 2012. The position is back to square one after four years and all these teachers would retire in 2016. As per the information available, the response of retiring teachers for deployment in new colleges was not encouraging.