3 med colleges may lose tag for non-compliance with NMC rules

GUWAHATI: Two of the oldest government medical institutions in the state — the Gauhati Medical College (GMC) and the Assam Medical College (AMC), Dibrugarh, besides Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College, Barpeta may get derecognised, if they do not comply with the the National Medical Commission rules. Senior officials of the state health department on Thursday said the NMC has made it mandatory for medical colleges and attached hospitals to install CCTV cameras so that the Commission can keep round-the-clock watch on their functioning. But the CCTVs in the said colleges were found to be defunct. CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “The NMC was unhappy with the defunct CCTV cameras. I have told the principals to resolve the issue.
It is not a big issue and can be resolved.” Health minister Keshab Mahanta too said the state government will take remedial measures with urgency, and derecognition of the medical colleges won’t be allowed to happen at any cost. Assam director of medical education, Anup Kumar Barman, said it was primarily due to internet connectivity issues and technical glitches that the NMC could not monitor the happenings in these colleges at certain points of time and asked for compliance report.

“We have been told that at times NMC does not receive the CCTV footage of the happenings in these medical colleges and hospitals,” Barman said, adding there is a need to ensure that CCTV cameras remain functional for central monitoring at the locations mentioned by the NMC. Most of the cameras are installed in the medical colleges, while some are in the hospitals attached to them. “We have already installed CCTV cameras as per the NMC guidelines in all medical college hospitals,” he said.
Another issue flagged by the NMC was discrepancies detected in Aadhaar-linked biometric attendance of the faculty members. “Due to technical glitch only, the biometric attendance of some of the faculty members could not be updated in the system accessed by NMC. The principals of the medical colleges concerned have been instructed to rectify the technical glitches,” Barman said, adding that the compliance reports of GMC and AMC have already been sent to NMC.