Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's announcement in the Assembly on Friday that the government would soon issue orders taking over the Pariyaram Medical College (PMC) has triggered fresh hope of an accelerated effort to complete the formalities of the takeover.
Though the previous United Democratic Front (UDF) government had announced the plan for the government takeover of the medical college under the cooperative sector, it could not be executed due to various reasons, especially the financial liabilities of the institution.
Mr. Vijayan's announcement in the Assembly has raised the hope that the process of the proposed takeover will begin soon. The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-controlled director board of the Kerala State Cooperative Hospital Complex and Centre for Advanced Medical Sciences (KSCHC & CAMS), which manages the medical college, has been positive to the takeover plan if it means turning the institution into a government medical college such as the Kozhikode Government Medical College and if it retains all its existing employees.
KSCHC & CAMS chairman Shekharan Miniyodan said the process of the government takeover would be expedited with the Chief Minister's announcement. Hoping that the process of the takeover would be initiated within three months at the most, he told The Hindu that the minor ‘technical issues’ involving conversion of the college under a society into a government institution would be solved.
He dismissed as baseless the earlier finding of the Cooperative Department officials that the number of employees in the medical college far exceeded the staff pattern of government medical colleges. ‘‘As per the Medical Council of India norms, our college is running short of staff including doctors,’’ he said.
A major hurdle for the takeover cited during the previous UDF rule is the huge financial liability. The college management had taken Rs.46 crore from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO). The then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy himself had stated that the college owed Rs.500 crore to HUDCO, including accumulated and penal interest.
Sources close to the medical college management said that their main concern was to ensure that there was no flight of doctors and professors from the institution once it was taken over by the government.
‘‘There are doctors who are getting hefty salary and perks and they may not stay if they are to be paid as per the service conditions in government medical colleges,’’ they confided. In the past, statutory pension was the major factor that attracted doctors and specialists to serve in government medical colleges, they said.
