Don’t charge students for internship migration: NMC

Balwant Garg

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Tribune News Service

Faridkot, April 1

Days after some private medical colleges in the state collected Rs 1.5 crore from 40 final-year MBBS students for giving them no-objection certificates (NOC) to do one-year internship from other medical colleges, the National Medical Commission (NMC) on Thursday directed the colleges not to collect any such fee from the students.

The directions came after the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) wrote to the NMC to intervene and stop this “fleecing” of the students.

“No charges should be levied on the students for completing internship as it’s a part of the MBBS training,” said Dr Aruna V Vanikar, president, Under Graduate Medical Education Board, NMC.

As per the rules, every medical student has to do one-year internship in the hospital associated with the parent college after completing the academic part of the MBBS course. However, the BFUHS came across many cases last month where students from private institutions paid a heavy fee to shift to other institutions for their internship.

To give the NOCs, some parent colleges forced each student to pay up to Rs 3 lakh. Internship should be completed in the teaching hospital affiliated with the medical institutions where the student was enrolled for his/her MBBS training, said Dr Vanikar in the letter to all medical colleges.

In the event of any difficulty due to the pandemic, the internship could be completed at another NMC-approved medical college hospital subject to the satisfaction of the college authorities and the university concerned where the student was enrolled for the MBBS training, said Dr Vanikar, adding that no charges should be levied on the student for completing the internship.