Medical students move court against excessive fee

KARACHI, The Sindh High Court on Friday put the Sindh advocate-general and the education secretary and the Peoples’ Medical College (Nawabshah) vice-chancellor on notice in a petition challenging the charging of excessive fee from local students.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Justice Zahid Hamid directed the respondents to file their comments on the next hearing, and put off the matter to a date in office.

Shama Zehra Naqvi and Urooj Memon, students of the college, submitted in the court that they were given admission on their request under the self-financing scheme on the seats reserved for foreign students which mostly remained vacant.

They informed the court that the tuition fee for local students under this scheme was Rs250,000 and for foreign student $7,000. However, the petitioners stated, the college administration charged the fee prescribed for foreign students when they qualified for the MBBS second year in 2010.

They prayed to the court to order the college administration to charge the fee prescribed for local students.