Gian Sagar Medical College reopens, faculty protests for pending salaries

Patiala: With the Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER), Punjab, granting provisional essentiality certificate to the Gian Sagar Medical and Dental College for filling 100 MBBS and 100 BDS seats, and the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) a provisional consent of affiliation to the college, the institution opened its doors all over again to the medical fraternity, on Monday.

However, a protest call of the faculty members of GS Bannur dimmed the joy of reopening with medical teachers staging a protest against the management of the institute, demanding salary clearance for the past 8 months.

Staffed with a 1000 strong employees, with 150 of them being doctors and many a faculty having left the institution to join other colleges to earn livelihoods, but not before filing a petition with the Education Tribunal against the institute, the reopening may bring good tidings for the institution.

Shut down due to the withdrawal of the NOC (No objection certificate) in May by the government, in the face of the management's inability to run the college, the students had also been granted a shift to other institutions ringing a death knell for the college. However, it seems to have risen from the dead again.

Earlier this month, a year after the revocation of the essentiality certificate of Gian Sagar Medical College and Hospital, Banur, by the Punjab Government, on grounds of the institutional trust failing to run it, the Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER) made a turnaround and issued a provisional essentiality certificate for 100 BDS seats for next year to the Gian Sagar Education Charitable Trust.

With the state government health authorities taking a lenient view of the prevailing situation, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot, was also found giving in to the new trust management proposal for granting provisional affiliation consent for starting of an MBBS course with 100 seats for 2019-20.

With certificates in place, Gian Sagar is there in the fray to take on admissions once again.

Dharminder Singh, who led the employee protest on Monday told TOI, "We are demanding that management should pay the salaries of its employees and then clear the Employees Provident Fund (EPF). The EPF of some of these employees is pending from eight years as there is no signing authority to give the clearances. Already the institute has been facing deficiencies in the records of Medical Council of India (MCI) during inspections conducted in the previous years whereas now the management itself has been claiming that infrastructure of Rs 50 crores had been theft in the past one year. How will they manage to teach the students here besides paying the salaries?"