By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Nov 27: The state cabinet on Wednesday gave its nod to the Meghalaya Health Services Academic Rules 2024 to carry out the recruitment of faculty members for the upcoming Shillong Medical College (SMC). The government has plans to make the SMC operational by the 2025-2026 academic year.
Talking to reporters after a meeting of the cabinet, Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said, “We had to come up with the service rules for the recruitment of faculty members to run the medical college. We were happy to do that and now, we are preparing to make it operational at the earliest.”
She said tenders have been floated for various components of construction.
“We are looking at affiliation. There is a bit of snag and we are looking at options B and C. We aim to see it become operational in the academic year of 2025-2026,” the minister said.
“The state medical college requires state service rules and like any other components of governance, you cannot recruit if you do not have the service rules,” she explained.
On challenges, she said the government does not think there will be much complications.
“We have in-house doctors who are likely to enter this service. So, we have readymade faculty members although not all will be eligible. We ensured in the cabinet note that we are guided from time to time so that as and when we have faculty members from within our system, it is called the lateral system. We hope that with the passage of time, a lateral choice will also be made available for the higher administrative posts,” Lyngdoh added.
She said the SMC’s financial implication will be Rs 16 crore annually with an intake capacity of 100 seats.
Talking about the Tura Medical College, she said, “We are preparing simultaneously. We are hopeful that we will be able to operationalise it at the earliest but it requires a little bit of time as some modalities need to be worked out.”
Asked about the PA Sangma Medical College, she said, “We are concerned only about the government colleges. As far as USTM is concerned, we have already made public the details of operationalisation of private medical colleges.”
The Cabinet also approved the Meghalaya Dental Health Service Rules.
On this, Ampareen said, “We still do not have a dental health service rule. This document will speed up all pending activities with regards to promotion and recruitment, to better the dental health services in the state”.