Bill placed to ensure discipline in pvt medical, dental colleges

The Private Medical College and Dental College Bill, 2022 was placed in the parliament today to ensure discipline in private medical and dental colleges by bringing those under a law from two separate guidelines.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque placed the bill and later it was sent to parliamentary standing committee on the respective ministry for further scrutiny.

The parliamentary watchdog was asked to submit its report within 60 days.

The private medical and dental colleges in Bangladesh are now operated under the Private Medical College Establishment and Operation Guidelines 2011 and Private Dental College Establishment and Operation Guidelines 2009.

As per the bill, a medical or dental college must have at least 50 students while its teacher-student ratio will have to be 1:10 as per the proposed law.

A medical college needs to have at least two acres of land in any metropolitan area while the land requirement for the dental college needs one acre.

For setting up a medical college outside any metropolitan area, the land requirement is four acres and it is two acres for a dental college.

For a medical college, Tk 3 crore will have to be deposited with any commercial bank while Tk 2 crore for any dental college as reserve funds.

The proposed law says any medical college must have one lakh square feet space for academic purposes and another one lakh square feet of space is needed for hospital purposes. For a dental college, the hospital area has to be 50,000 square feet each.

However, the authorities concerned will inspect such colleges and hospitals from time to time.

The medical and dental colleges will have to be affiliated with any public university.

The government will fix the academic fees for medical and dental colleges.

Besides, private medical college or dental college authorities will have dispose of their wastes in a scientific manner.

In the case of violation of the law, the maximum punishment will be two years of imprisonment or a fine of Tk 10 lakh or both.

Currently, there are 70 private medical colleges and 26 private dental colleges in the country.