PAKISTAN MEDICAL COMMISSION’S INCOMPETENCE
How the incompetent Pakistan Medical Commission came into
existence to attempt a flawed “national” MDCAT and why changing policies on whim is a bad idea:
PART 1: PMC Act 2020
Through a presidential ordinance — the PMC Act — Pakistan Medical Commission was created in 2019 to replace Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). (1) Following that, Islamabad High Court (IHC) ruled PMC Act null and void, and the former PMDC was revived again. The Supreme Court later upheld the IHC verdict. Earlier, the Government had failed to convince the Senate about its necessity and justification of its content. (2) Imran Khan’s government, however, was adamant about bringing PMC back to existence. In the last part of October and the first half of November 2019, opposition parties were protesting at Islamabad against the government in the Azaadi March. PTI took advantage of the situation and during the joint assembly session of Parliament on 7th November 2019, PMC Act 2020 was brought in as a supplementary bill. (3) Present opposition members protested this move by tearing copies of the bill. 11 bills were passed in one session. (4) PMC came into existence with all its powers in September of 2020.
Keep in mind that members of the council were nominated by the Prime Minister. When compared to PMC, Pakistan Medical, and Dental Council had a lot more democratically elected members.
PART 2: PMC and the 18th Amendment
The 18th Amendment was the antithesis of the 17th Amendment. It gave more powers to the parliament and provinces. Education was devolved to the provinces and their syllabi were developed by provinces.
MDCAT was always conducted separately by provinces. For example, in 2019, the following universities were appointed to conduct the tests:
- University of Health Sciences for Punjab, Baluchistan, and AJK;
- Jinnah Sindh Medical University & Liaquat University for Sindh;
- Khyber Medical University for Pakhtunkhwa through ETEA.
In this case, it was a provincial matter. On October 3, 2020, soon after its creation, PMC appointed a federal university called the National University of Medical Sciences to conduct the test with PMC. (5) This was another example of how the PTI federal government in Islamabad took certain powers away from provinces and handed that power over to a federal entity.
PART 3: Sheer incompetence of PMC and flawed
logics.
Unfair Syllabus:
On October 19, 2020. A new “common” syllabus” was posted on PMC’s website. (6) The test date was announced to be on 15th November. There is a huge issue with this; As you know education is a provincial subject following the 18th Amendment and therefore, provincial syllabi are vastly different from each other in terms of topics. PMC imposed a federal-dominated syllabus on provinces against their will, one month before the exam. The utter mental torture that this was for students is unimaginable. This new syllabus was optimized for Federal students and those studying in FBISE-affiliated schools such as APS across the country.
Students study their syllabi for two years and “cram” it all from June to October. Changing the test syllabus so suddenly was not helping anyone. Even if they wanted this change, only one month was an extremely short period for its implementation. PMC’s flawed logic hurt the chances of a lot of aspirants. This switch approach — changing policies on a whim — is common in modern Pakistan
Not only that, PMC did not pay heed to any protest. VC Ali Raza came on TV, made false promises, and went home. The MDCAT date was delayed a few times and PMC kept changing the same syllabus more and more! Then, finally, the syllabus was changed for the last time when Sindh High Court (SHC) stepped in.
Academic board/ Court cases:
Karachi-based lawyer Muhammad Jibran Nasir along with four MDCAT aspirant petitioners, who he called the “Fantastic 4”, submitted a petition in Sindh High Court challenging the legality of the “national” MDCAT. They argued that according to the PMC Act 2020, the syllabus was meant to be created and approved by an academic board. There was no academic board as PMC hadn’t formed one yet. Resultantly, SHC ruled “national” MDCAT illegal. (7) To no one’s surprise, PMC was actually not following its own law.
SHC gave PMC a road map which included making an academic board and announcing a new date while keeping in mind the time required by students to prepare. It is important for you to keep the mental health of aspirants in your mind; the stress they must have gone through during all this.
PMC approved the same syllabus from the new academic board with some minute changes and gave less than 10 days to prepare for the test. It’s insane to think that a syllabus was confirmed less than 10 days before a major test such as this. To summarize, students had to get to court for PMC to follow its law. During October and November, there were many petitions and hearings in Peshawar High Court, Lahore High Court, IHC, and SHC. However, during all of that, VC Ali Raza confidently gave contradictory statements in press conferences.
Out of course:
VC Ali Raza had promised that no out-of-course questions would be included in the test and in-person rechecking would be done. (8) However, MDCAT 2020 had lots of out-of-syllabus questions — questions that students from provinces hadn’t ever read about.
Following the test result, PMC tried to save face by declaring that students were given full marks for 14 “ambiguous” MCQs. Mere days after that, VC Ali Raza came on TV and said no grace marks had been given. Another contradictory statement.
No carbon copy
No carbon copy was given to students which means that students now had no proof of the questions they had marked correctly: No way to challenge the authenticity of the questions asked in the test.
Result:
Where do we start? Here’s a short summary of what happened:
- The result of MDCAT 2020 was uploaded at midnight at around 12 am, before an approaching court hearing.
- There were thousands and thousands of issues of wrong roll numbers, names, and marks.
- There were evidently no grace marks awarded.
- Many students were below 60% passing the criteria since most of the questions were alien to them. Most of these students belonged to provinces.
Imagine the torture these students went through to get this result. Following another petition in the Sindh High Court, the result was removed from the website, roll numbers/ names were fixed, and it was
uploaded again. PMC’s VC blamed poor computers for it. Unreal incompetence.
PMC was then battling students in court case after court case. After numerous protests were organized, VC Ali claimed that the protesters are a “mafia”. Furthermore, government officials were eerily silent about it. Education Minister, Shafqat Mehmood completely disassociated himself saying that it’s not under his command and, even worse, called it a ‘good initiative’ through a mere tweet. It was one of the biggest blunders the PTI government ever made.
STUDENT’S PROTESTS
Amid court cases, by January, a sit-in protest was held in front of Governor House, Lahore. There was a meeting between a delegation of MDCAT students, sent by DC Lahore, and PMC. (9) Students were still not satisfied with the explanations given by PMC and protests continued.
Their DEMANDS were the following here:
- Keys to the test, students’ keys, and paper be made public as soon as possible.
- Passing criteria should be reduced to 50% as was the case before PMC.
- The mentioned 14 “ambiguous” MCQs should be made public.
- The issue of grace marks should be made clear.
- 40 MCQs were out of Punjab’s syllabus which should be deleted from the test.
- Manual rechecking should be done. In-person checking should be done as VC PMC, Ali Raza promised.
- Domicile restrictions should be reenacted again.
- The fee of private medical colleges should be regulated like what was the norm under PMDC.
- A considerable section of the students demanded the re-conduct of MDCAT through provinces as it was meant to be prior to September 2020 and the whole PMC debacle. (10)
Students’ demands were ignored in 2020. Nothing was done to help them, at all. Now, here you’d think that PMC and the PTI-administered Ministry of Health must have learned a valuable lesson and that they must have taken measures to ensure that nothing like this ever repeats again. If yes, then you’re wrong. MDCAT was once again marred by controversy. I’d not be wrong if I say that 2021 was the worst MDCAT conducted yet where a staggering 65.6% of students failed the test. The test which was conducted “online” on tablets and for which students had to pay six thousand as fee. The test had numerous problems with the devices, which was expected as even the procurement of devices was controversial. The 2021 test was rechecked by thousands of students who paid for rechecking and traveled to Islamabad at their own expense from as far as Gwadar and Gilgit, yet still, they got no relief. Students who still had the energy to protest this were beaten.
The biggest issue with PMC’s MDCAT was that it was done all of a sudden. One understands the logic of making a test not based on “Ratta system” but changing the test without reforming the education system itself first doesn’t make sense. Suddenly changing any policy would always cause more damage than good. Reforming the education system is a good cause and it should be done from the bottom up, gradually over time. Taking all stakeholders on board, including provincial governments and private institutions, and creating a broad educational reform policy would’ve resulted in a much more stable and fruitful implementation. However, this wasn’t the case as PTI-led center government and PPP-led Sindh government were at arms with each other and Islamabad wasn’t ready to talk to any stakeholders. Resultantly, the mental health of students and their careers proved to be collateral damage. As mentioned before, the switch-policy is common during the modern era of Pakistani politics and is very damaging. Whatever happened is a lesson for us to learn why policies should be created by taking all stakeholders and implemented gradually over time to reduce the risk of policy instability and reduce in public trust.
For further reading:
2019 Ordinance: http://www.na.gov.pk/uploads/documents/1555947637_871.pdf
PMC Act 2020: https://www.pmc.gov.pk/Documents/law/PMC-Act,2020.pdf
National assembly: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10O_udsNPrB86O4NNKHxqtW5TwGkUx8CR/view?usp=sharing
Private fee hike under PMC: https://www.dawn.com/news/1512152
Senate committee rejected PMC: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2086670/senatecommitte-rejects-pmc-ordinance-2019
11 bills passed: https://www.dawn.com/news/1515476
PMC appoints NUMS: https://www.geo.tv/latest/311259-mdcat-for-medical-collegesto-be-held-in-second-week-of-november-pmc
Abrupt changes to syllabus: https://www.dawn.com/news/1587217
Illegality of NMDCAT: https://www.samaa.tv/news/2020/11/sindh-court-stops-pmcfrom-holding-mdcat-on-november-15/
Federal dominant syllabus: https://www.pmc.gov.pk/Documents/Examinations/Revised%20PMC%20National%20MDCAT%20Syllabus%202020.pdf
No out-of-course questions promise: https://www.dawn.com/news/1587651
PMC notification: https://pami.org.pk/the-complete-national-mdcat-result-is-nowavailable/
PMC’s shameless defense: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/763196-pmc-officialstalk-about-mdcat-2020-paper-checking-process-after-students-protest
No grace marks awarded: https://www.geo.tv/latest/325109-mdcat-2020-grace-marksnot-included-in-results-says-pmc
Student protests: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/761711-students-take-to-roadsto-protest-against-mdcat-2020-pmc-as-shafqat-mahmood-gives-cold-shoulder
