Chandigarh : PGI Director not granted extension

Chandigarh: The Governing Body of the PGIMER, headed by Health Minister JP Nadda has decided not to grant extension of service to Dr Yogesh Chawla, Director, PGI. The decision was taken at a governing and institute body meeting, wherein, Mr. Nadda appointed a search selection committee to appoint a new director.

The Chairman, of the search selection committee according to consensus decision is to be chosen by Mr. Nadda himself.

With regards to the decision on the present Director, as per the new recruitment rules, he will be allowed to continue serving as a faculty member, if he hasn’t attained 65 years of age.The esteemed body also approved bringing about uniformity of recruitment rules for institutes of national significance such as: AIIMS, PGI, and JIPMER.

Other matters on the meeting’s agenda included: charge sheet of Medical Superintendent, Dr. Anil Gupta, setting up of the Red Cross Sarai, the restarting of tele-psychiatry medicine and recruitment criterion of faculty for post graduate medical colleges.

Decision on Medical Superintendent, Anil Gupta’s charge sheet was deferred. The decision of the same has left to Mr. Nadda. During the meeting Mr. Nadda also gave his approval on the matter of setting up the UT administration funded Red Cross Sarai on the PGI campus.

Members at the meeting also discussed restarting of tele-psychiatry medicine at PGI with the allocated health ministry funds.

"This tele-psychiatry medicine shall be restarted and we are deliberating on upgrading the telemedicine department as national telemedicine centre," said Ali Rizvi, Joint Secretary, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The Health Minister has put the institute on the job of working out a protocol for telemedicine consultation in areas of specialization such as: medicine, surgery, gynaecology and paediatrics. The Minister has given the institute a 15 day duration to frame the protocol, before introducing it on the national canvas.

The governing board members also took up the matter of faculty shortage at post graduate level; deciding to include 25-30% of honorary faculty after retirement, as adjunct faculty. This is being done based on the MCI highlight of 30% faculty shortage of medical teachers in post graduate institutions.

"Those who have diploma of national board instead of a post graduate degree can also be eligible as medical teachers. We also discussed that those who have done post graduation after MBBS but not residency, after some tenure, he or she can also be inducted as a teaching faculty," said Rizvi.

Medical teachers are to continue to retire at 65 years of age.