VIJAYAWADA: Medical students pursuing both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at government medical colleges have decried the lack of proper amenities, which is causing hardships to them while pursuing their education.
Though the state government has been paying a lot of attention to the renovation of existing buildings, installing state-of-the-art medical equipment and strengthening manpower as part of its plan to accord top priority to healthcare, medicos find the government lacking when it comes to student care.
Students at a good number of medical colleges regret not having proper hostel accommodation. This is resulting in more students being forced to share hostel rooms. Minimum three UGs or PGs or more are staying in one room, which is supposed to accommodate just two. In some medical colleges, these students are even being put up in hostels meant for students pursuing paramedical courses.
For instance, at Sri Venkateswara Medical College in Tirupati, the existing hostel building for PG students is in a dilapidated condition. As such, there is no hostel for PG students in the Tirupati college. So is the case with the government medical college in Anantapur. Students are being accommodated in temporary hostels.
Students say as they cannot afford to stay out in private accommodation by paying huge monthly rentals, they are staying in the accommodation provided by medial colleges despite facing a lot of inconvenience. In this context, they regret that the state government is not revising their stipend upwards in parity with other states.
Medical students had recently approached director of medical education and wanted to serve strike notice on revision of stipend. But they deferred their plan it at the assurance of DME that he will taking up the matter with the state government.
AP Junior Doctors’ Association president Dr. J. Jeshwanth said, “We appeal to the state government that it provide better amenities to students in all government medical colleges and also revise the stipend upwards. This will free us from daily worries and enable us to provide better healthcare to patients in the state.”
Among other complaints of most medical students are not having proper library facilities, reading halls and playgrounds.
A student said the government is focusing more on number of colleges than the quality of amenities it provides.
