Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT) result was declared on 16th December but on the same day, it has been taken down because hundreds of thousands of students filed complaints.
Students understand that merit was totally ignored. When the paper was conducted, fourteen MCQs were seen out of the syllabus, and similarly, no carbon papers were given to them. Apart from it, when the result was announced, many students found themselves absent. While some found that their names and roll numbers did not match.
All these problems show how transparent is the Pakistan Medical Council (PMC). After observing all these mistakes, students started a Twitter trend with the hashtag #RejectPMC and it became a top trend. This was not the end. This was followed by demands on social media where some students demanded physical protest while others intended to sue PMC for transparency in court. When it became a serious issue and was found in headlines, Ali Raza the head of PMC hold a press conference in which he answered the general queries not what students demand.
Students are still facing a lot of problems. First, six hundred students are marked absent while they were present. Though the errors were corrected, yet many still found this issue while searching their result. Second, carbon papers were not given to them yet. Third, fourteen MCQs were found out of the syllabus. Students were promised that they would be awarded fourteen marks but still, students are saying that was not awarded.
Fourth, the criteria for passing marks are 120 out of 200, which is not fair. Students of backward areas can’t meet it. Fifth, syllables that were followed in the test were Punjab text board syllabus. However, other syllabuses are different. So the best policy is that every province should conduct its own test separately like previous times.
These genuine problems and queries of students show that there is a big question mark on the transparency of the PMC. So PMC must ensure its transparency because it is not a problem of few students but that of hundreds of thousands of students.
Habib Harifal
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