Kaski: Gandaki Medical College (GMC) remained tense on Thursday after MBBS students protested against the college administration’s act of imposing an additional charge. The agitating students, who have been staging protests for the past nine days, also padlocked the college.

The protesters said the college administration has charged each student an additional sum of Rs 100,000 under various headings. According to them, the college collects more than Rs 3.14 million, the ceiling set by the Ministry of Education for the MBBS course. But the students said they have been paying as high as Rs 4.8 million to study MBBS at GMC.

It is learnt that the college had charged an additional sum, saying that each student should pay Rs 25,000 to the Institute of Medicine (IoM) and Rs 5,000 to the Nepal Medical Council.

IoM officials, however, said that they don’t charge students extra except the fee set by Tribhuvan University. “We don’t charge extra or more than what Tribhuvan University has set,” said Dr Sarad Onta, IoM assistant dean who looks after the institute’s academic section.



Kabindra Thapa, one of the protesting students, said they were forced to stage protests after the college started charging fees under ‘ambiguous’ headings. “We are demanding that the unnecessary fees imposed by the college be scrapped along with the improvement in infrastructure and facilities,” Thapa said.

However, the college administration claimed that GMC has collected fees as per the TU provision. Hari Poudel, chairman of the college, said, “The fees are fixed according to the rules and at students’ convenience,” Poudel said. GMC, a TU affiliated medical college, admits 75 MBBS students annually.

source: the kathmandu post,28 June 2013