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Medical university in disarray

Eliminate corruption, ensure fair-play
3 February 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
A parliamentary subcommittee has found Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University reeling under all sorts of anomalies for years. The committee has recommended in its report, submitted to the parliamentary standing committee, that 313 staff of the university were recruited in violation of service rules. The news is disturbing if only because it shows how corruption has made inroads deeper into the heart of the country's premier medical education centre. The committee has also found that many doctors and employees of the university were promoted on grounds that had nothing to do with their professional excellence. Finally, there are serious allegations of corruption in the procurement process which caused huge financial loss to the university. The picture we get from the parliamentary subcommittee's observations is indeed bleak. The university is known as an institution where our doctors can get advanced training in different branches of medical education. That is necessary to have an adequate number of good doctors who can reduce local patients' dependence on treatment abroad. But when the university itself is reported to be steeped in abysmal corruption and irregularities, it is hard to believe that it will deliver results. However, the observations of the parliamentary subcommittee seem to be based on a retrospective assessment of the university's performance. The subcommittee has found out what went wrong at the university in the seven or eight years before the present AL government came to power. What is obviously needed is streamlining of the university's administration to enhance the level of the services rendered by it. The wrongs done in the past will have to be addressed but issues like merit and efficiency must be kept above party interests at all times. Moreover, the university has to function without being influenced by extraneous factors. As for recommendations, we saw in the past that very few of them were implemented. Committees were formed and asked to suggest what should be done, but the suggestions almost never led to any change in practical terms. Medical education is certainly an area which should have no place for partisan activities. But the report on the BSMMU does indicate that the university has for years been controlled by the supporters of the ruling party, regardless of which party it might be. There is ample scope for improvement here. The present administrators of the university can set an example by rising above partisan considerations to make it a corruption-free, merit-based institution.

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