The State government must reduce the tuition fee in Annamalai University’s medical and dental colleges and at the Indian Road Transport-run medical college in Perundurai, the Doctors’ Association for Social Equality has said.
The government had taken over the University through a resolution in the Assembly in 2013 and is currently functioning as a government college in Cuddalore district. Yet, the fee for the medical college is 2.5 times more than what is charged in a government college, pointed out G.R. Ravindranath, association general secretary.
An MBBS student at the University pays ₹5.54 lakh whereas in a government college the fee is only ₹13,000, he said. Dental college students pay ₹3.40 lakh and the fee for postgraduate medical courses ranges from ₹8 lakh to ₹9.8 lakh per year, he pointed out. Whereas in the government dental college students pay ₹11,600 annually and PG students are charged ₹32,000, Dr. Ravindranath said.
Also, IRT college continued to charge the old rate of ₹3.8 lakh despite being taken over by the government.
The association also wanted to cancel the proposed exams for dental students, and they must be promoted to the next year as had been advised by the Dental Council of India. The exams should be conducted only after normalcy had returned after the COVID-19 threat had passed, he added.
The fee levied on the PG students should be waived considering that they had been working hard to treat patients with COVID-19, Dr. Ravindranath said. If fee had been collected then it should be refunded, he suggested.
The government should pay ₹2 lakh to students who had contracted the viral infection during duty, the activist demanded. The family of Pradeepa, who died at Kilpauk Medical College, should be given ₹50 lakh as compensation as the doctor died on duty.
He has also demanded that the government pay the students’ salary dues that was withheld for the period from Oct. 25 to 31 last year, when the students protested for their reasonable demands. The government had termed it ‘service break’.