The Meghalaya Cabinet, on Friday approved the setting up of 3 medical colleges – Tura, Shillong and at USTM, RI Bhoi.
Speaking to reporters, Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said that the three medical colleges include Tura medical college, Shillong medical college and a private medical college to be set up by the USTM.
“The progress of the Tura medical college is about 44% and we are looking at fast tracking and we were given assurance that by May 2024, we will be able to complete most of the building. Progress seems to be good. We may have problems as far as running the medical college there. As far as Shillong medical college, we are likely to take off very quickly by 2025. At least, Cabinet nod has been given today. We will immediately start off the process,” she said.
She said at least 140 good seats will be provided for the State.
Principal Secretary of Health Sampath Kumar said, “Tura medical college is facing the challenges related to faculty. There again, the Cabinet has asked the department to explore how actually that can be run using PPP mode by identifying reputed medical institutions to help in terms of operationalizing the Tura medical college.”
“Similarly, the Shillong medical college, we are leveraging the existing resources that we have like Shillong civil hospital, Ganesh Das hospital and also by leveraging the existing human resources especially the specialist doctors and those who can actually potentially become the faculty in the medical college. A committee has been constituted and based on that the proposal has been made.
We will start with 50 seats in Shillong and over a period of time once it starts, once we bring our own faculty, that will be upgraded even to 100 medical seats,” he added.
He also informed, “USTM has come up with a mutually beneficial proposal where they have been offering free and concessional medical seats to the state’s students and also requesting for financial assistance in the form of a repayable loan. That has also been considered to go on a switch challenge mode, which is a unique proposal. Once we examine the entire proposal we will put it in the public domain and ask everybody if there are any other better proposals there then accordingly the government will take a decision.” So for all these colleges, the cabinet has given a nod to the department to take the next step.
When asked, Kumar said Rs 247 crore has been sanctioned for the Tura medical college and Rs 180 crore was funded by the Centre. “We will require Rs 114 crore for setting up the Shillong medical college,” he added.
According to him, the government is planning to implement the decision on a mission mode and target to set up all three medical colleges within 2-3 years.