Pvt medical college grads told to fill 400 rural spots

Mumbai: A yearlong rural service will be compulsory for doctors graduating from private medical colleges and have availed scholarship facilities or fees reimbursement from the government. The medical education department on Friday issued orders for the same, which will be applicable for the MBBS students taking admission for the academic year 2018-19.

State medical education minister Girish Mahajan told The Asian Age, “We have 900 vacancies in the rural hospitals and by doing this, we will get 400 doctors to serve there.”

Effectively, medical students will have to undergo a yearlong service after the completion of the MBBS course. If they refuse to do so, they will have to repay the scholarship or the reimbursed fee amount with interest, deputy secretary Surendra Chankar clarified in the order.

The reason for bringing about this compulsion is that the government is not getting sufficient doctors to work in the tribal and rural areas. Despite making rural service compulsory for students of government medical colleges, the government is facing 900 vacancies. Hence, the compulsion was extended to private aided and unaided medical college students who taking benefits from government schemes. There are various scholarships for the students belonging to the SC, ST, NT, and VJNT categories.