Only three foreign medical graduates to get stipend in Punjab

Faridkot, July 21

After the Finance Department approved the funding of only three new seats for the payment of stipend to foreign medical graduates (FMG) for internship in the government medical colleges of the state, the Punjab Medical Council (PMC) has reduced the internship seats from 36 to three.

As many as 62 FMGs from Punjab are eligible for the internship after they cleared the Foreign Medical Graduates Exam (FMGE) conducted by the National Board of Examination in January this year. Last month, the PMC had offered 36 seats to FMGs for internship. Every medical intern gets Rs 15,000 per month as stipend. However, after the Finance Department’s order, the PMC has issued a notification saying only three seats are available for internship.

While these 62 FMGs of January 2024 batch are struggling to start their internship for the last about five months, a new batch of FMGs, comprising about 250 medical graduates, has joined them this week.

The latest FMGE test was conducted on July 6 and its result was declared on July 17. In the latest FMGE test, 35,819 foreign medical graduates had appeared for the exam all over the country and about 7,200 (20.19 per cent) of them passed the exams. About 250 of the 7,200 successful candidates are from Punjab.

Akashdeep Aggarwal, secretary, PMC, said the council was in the process of starting internship of all these students at Government Hospital, Sector 16, Chandigarh. “We are discussing the matter with the UT administration,” he said.

Internship is crucial for medical graduates as it provides practical experience in various medical fields and is a mandatory requirement to practise medicine in the country. The idea of rotational internship is to train medical graduates to fulfil their role as doctors.