Narowal A school yet to produce graduate: 14 years of neglect
Narowal: Not even a single student of dispensers' diploma course at the local DHQ Hospital during last 14 years has been able to qualify his examination, mainly owing to a lack of teaching staff and infrastructure at the hospital ostensibly upgraded from THQ Hospital in 1991.
According to sources, the dispensers' diploma course was started at the DHQ Hospital in 1994 three years after the tehsil was upgraded to a district and the Punjab Medical Faculty (PMF) approved 17 seats for the one-year diploma.
However, no infrastructure worthy the level of a DHQ Hospital was ever developed. Also, no full-fledged dispensers' training school was established to cater to the needs of a newly-established district.
As many as 204 students got admission in the diploma course during the last 14 years, but none of them could qualify the examinations held every year under the auspices of PMF.
Students bemoaned that no regular staff was ever recruited to teach them except a dispenser appointed by the hospital administration for the purpose.
Sufi Shaukat, who is sole member as well as in-charge of what is technically called 'a teaching faculty', said that no syllabus for the diploma course was ever designed by the PMF.
However, he said, it was only last year when the faculty prescribed a syllabus for the diploma course, which, according
to him, would help students concentrate more on their studies.
Medical Superintendent Dr Qari Muhammad Abbas said that he had ordered improving teaching facilities at the hospital.
EDO (Health) Dr Akmal Khurshid said the administration had recently purchased computers and projectors to improve the teaching facilities and this would indeed improve results in future.
Markazi Anjuman-i-Shehrian President Khwaja Nadeem
Butt demanded health department high-ups take a serious notice of the situation and establish a proper dispensers' training school instead. Dawn
