39 nursing colleges may lose affiliation

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, August 24

As many as 39 nursing colleges in the state are facing the risk of losing affiliation with the medical university.

These colleges have not paid annual affiliation fee, inspection fee, endowment funds and many other expenses to the medical university in the past two years. As repeated reminders to these colleges by Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) have failed in getting the mandatory annual funds from these colleges, the university has now made public the names of these ‘defaulter’ colleges. The total outstanding fee/funds towards these colleges are about Rs 2.68 crore.

Sources in the BFUHS revealed that Punjab is facing an unusual position — an oversupply of nursing institutions. Among the 109 nursing colleges in the state, many lack rudimentary infrastructure. A large proportion of seats in these colleges are lying vacant, making the running of these colleges economically unviable for the private managements.

Out of 109 nursing colleges, BFUHS has identified 84 colleges having numerous deficiencies, indicating that teaching programmes and other facilities in these colleges are inadequate as per the norms of the Indian Nursing Council, New Delhi. BFUHS has identified only eight nursing colleges in the state that the students should opt for to get good quality education.

On an average, more than 50 per cent seats in nursing colleges are lying vacant, said HC Rawat, Dean (examination) Nursing in BFUHS.

Reflecting the poor standards of nursing education, less than 4 per cent candidates could get 50 per cent marks in the Punjab Staff Nurses Recruitment Test (PSNRT) conducted by BFUHS in April.

The result of PSNRT reveals that we need to pay attention to the nursing education in the state, said Dr Raj Bahadur, Vice-Chancellor, BFUHS.