Published On : Wed, Jul 11th, 2018

Maharashtra Govt makes one year rural service mandatory to all MBBS students

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Nagpur: The Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER) in Maharashtra has made one year rural stint mandatory to all students after MBBS that includes those studying in private medical colleges too. Till, last year, it was compulsory to only students studying in Government Medical Colleges.

Maharashtra’s Medical Education Minister Girish Mahajan told media, “There is a dearth of doctors rendering services in rural areas. We had thought about making compulsory the one year rural stint to students. Out of contemplation we felt that it will in improving rural health service in terms of number of medicos. It will also benefit the students in getting experience.”

Government spends on the students studying in Government medical colleges as they have to pay less amount in the form of fees. The rest amount is paid by Government. It also bears the expenses of the reserved category students studying in private medical colleges. Tribal Development Department, Social Justice Department provide 100 per cent scholarship to SC, ST, VJ NT and 50 per cent to OBC. Till now, the rural stint was not mandatory for students of private medical colleges.

The expenses of these students borne through the money belong to public. Government felt that the students should payback against what it (Government) spend on them. The best way to payback is to go for rural stint on mandatory basis. It will be implemented from the year 2018-19. It will not be mandatory for the students who do not avail any scholarship or disbursement scheme.

The students who avail all the scholarship schemes, if fail to render services in rural area then they have to return amount of scholarship with interest to Government. The distribution of one year rural stint services to the students will be done through Executive Director of DMER and Director of Public Health.

Earlier, the students after completing MBBS used to postpone the rural stint to be done after Post Graduation (PG). They cited the reason of spending that time for the preparation of Common Entrance Test for getting admission to PG. After PG they again used to make request for the postponement of the rural stint to post- Super Speciality Course. Most of the students neither completed the bond in their whole life nor deposited the amount to be paid against not completing it.

Between 2005 to 2015, the amount pending with the students for not completing the bond is around Rs 600 crore which is difficult to recover now. With a view to bring curb on all these problems, Government has made up rural stint mandatory to students completing MBBS.