SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Aug 4: While the Jharkhand government is searching for professors from out of the state to man its five medical colleges, over two dozen associate professors who are eligible for a promotion, have been languishing in their own institutions due to lack of timely promotion.
As a result, the UG seats in the four medical colleges and PG courses are at stake due to lack of senior faculty members. The out-of-state teachers are not interested in coming to Jharkhand while the local teachers are not being given their due promotion.
Incidentally, Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) of Health AK Singh had on September 29, 2022, during inspection of SNMMCH, had announced that a notification to promote associate professors of all the five medical colleges to the professor rank and assistant professor to associate professor would be issued within 15 days.
Thereafter, the health department took a list of such senior teachers from all the five medical colleges. But even after 11 months of the ACS Health announcement, not a single associate professor has been promoted so far.
Last week, the health department called a walk-in interview in Ranchi for the posts of nine professors on contract for the super-speciality hospital at SNMMCH but not a single candidate appeared for the same.
A retired professor of the medical college said that Jharkhand has been left with the only alternative to save medical colleges from NMC by filling up senior posts with the promotion of eligible associate professors which would also pave the road for the promotion of assistant professors and new appointments.
The highest numbers of associate professors who are eligible for the post of professor are in Mahatma Gandhi Medical Memorial College Hospital (MGMMCH) Jamshedpur followed by Shahid Nirmal Mahto Medical College Hospital (SNMMCH) Dhanbad, Sheikh Bhikhari Medical College Hospital (SBMCH) Hazaribagh, Medinirai Medical College Hospital (MMCH) Palamu and Sido Kanhu Medical College Hospital (SKMCH) Dumka.
Dr DK Choudhary (paediatrics), Balram Jha (medicine) like dozen associate professors in different faculties of MGMMCH Jamshedpur are eligible for the post of professor but have not been given due promotion.
Similarly at SNMMCH Dhanbad, Dr Anil Kumar (surgery), Dr Krishna Kumari (physiology), Dr SK Verma (biochemistry) and Dr Raj Laxmi Tubid (medicine) like several senior teachers should have been professors if they were given timely promotion.
At SKMCH Dumka, associate professors Dr BB Mahto (eye), Dr Anukaran Purty (medicine) and Dr Lugun Hembram (surgery) would have been professors years ago if they got timely promotion.
At MMCH Palamu, Dr Dharmendra Kumar (eye), Dr DK Jha (medicine), Dr Kamendra Prasad (pathology) and other associate professors had been eligible for a promotion in 2018 but due to lack of timely promotion, they are still waiting for a notification.
Similarly at SBMCH Hazaribag, Dr OP Srivastava, Dr AK Choudhary (surgery) and Dr Biswas (pharmacology) like half a dozen associate professors are deserving candidates for a promotion to professor rank.
