Parliament debate on private medical college

An adjournment debate is to be held in Parliament on the private medical college in Malabe on 20 September.

Parliamentary sources say that Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa has decided to grant the time for debate on the request of the major opposition United National Party.

The ruling party has also agreed to the debate.  The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), Inter University Students’ Federation and many other organisations have raised concerns on the standards of the controversial medical faculty of the South Asia Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM), known as the Malabe private medical college.

The GMOA says the medical college should not have legal recognition since it is a branch of a Russian university and demands that the Gazette notification recognising the medical college be revoked.

The Medical Faculty of SAITM is actually the Sri Lankan campus of Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy of the Russian Federation and is a foreign institution, although most of the academic staff members are from Sri Lankan universities.

Minister of Higher Education S.B. Dissanayake has said that SAITM is the first private medical university in Sri Lanka and it is a legally functioning, accredited institution.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena has appointed a five-member committee to examine the functions of the institute and the standards of the institution.

(Colombo Page)