[ Junroi Mamai ]
ITANAGAR, Jan 17: The Tomo Riba Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (TRIHMS) authorities have suffered a setback in its plan to start the session of the TRIHMS Medical College from August this year as the Medical Council of India (MCI) did not give its approval to the authorities after they found the project’s present status ‘unsatisfactory’ and ‘not up to the mark’.
An MCI team, which was in the state in October last year to inspect the progress of the medical college found shortcomings in terms of adequate college structure construction and faculty recruitment.
TRIHMS Director, Dr Moji Jini has informed that the MCI team had directed the department to speed up the pace of college building construction and complete the recruitment of about 106 doctors within this year in order to ensure early approval for starting the academic session of the state’s much-awaited medical college project.
According to Dr Jini, the third phase of recruitment process is over for a total of 99 faculty members and the file is currently being placed with the Chief Minister’s office.
“The MCI has been repeatedly asking us to speed up the faculty recruitment process saying that if we do not achieve the target soon, the MCI would not give its nod of approval to the state’s medical college”, he stated, adding that it would possibly take another five to six years for the medical college to start off if the project is rejected at this stage.
Apart from these issues hampering the early functioning of the project, another matter of concern for the TRIHMS authorities is a pending litigation against it in the Gauhati High Court challenging the present recruitment process.
Speaking about the litigation, the TRIHMS Director clarified that unlike what the petitioners in the case have claimed, the recruitment process in no way deprived any eligible candidate of non- Arunachal Pradesh Health Services cadre.
“It is usual practice for the recruitment authorities to give preference to state health employees, while rest of the candidates can be recruited through open competition”, he explained.
However, notwithstanding the fact that the court has recently given directions to the authorities to maintain status quo on the recruitment issue, it cannot be denied that these issues combined have been delaying the project for too long.
