Increasing number of fake institutions, training schools, professional educational or technical institutes etc. in the State is an old story. Sometimes news trickles down about the fake institutions but after a few days of hullabaloo, the issue dies down either by resorting to political influence or using money power. But running a fake pharmaceutical institute even on a small scale and the same issuing diplomas to pharmacists after attending the course for two years is something really mind-boggling.
This is not a figment of imagination; it is a real story of a private hospital in Sopore running courses without formal registration. We are talking about Specialist Hospital and Cancer Centre at Mazbug in North Kashmir’s Sopore town where students complained that Drug and Food Control Department had refused to honour their degrees. On the basis of this complaint an enquiry was conducted in the institution and it was found that it had not at all obtained registration from the Medical Department of the State. Students were admitted to two years course in Pharmacy after which they expected to get a job with some hospital or medical institution. The question is firstly why the local police have not performed their part in examining thoroughly the status of the institute when it was incepted. How did the police and the district administration miss the duty of ensuring that the institute had obtained proper registration before it started functioning? Secondly, why did not the students and their parents reconfirm whether the institute in which they were seeking admission was registered with the Government or not? Agreed that there can be private medical institutes because the law of the land allows it, yet even the private institutes are subject to certain norms and conditions of functioning. Why were those norms ignored and who ignored them? This is a case fit for criminal investigation because the career of our youngsters is involved. There are numerous students coming from families with very mediocre income yet they want their wards to enter the noble profession connected with the healthcare. These amounts to cheating the poor and deserving students and the authorities should register a case against the miscreants.