AS the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Sunday busted a gang allegedly involved in leaking the medical entrance exam test (MDCAT) paper, the Federal Government (Federal Ministry of Education) tall claims to hold the important exam in transparent and safe mode all over the country fizzled out as several hundred students both male and female were first made to wait for hours in a crowd and then sit in the jam packed hall where there was no concept of Social distancing.
This has also substantiated the Oppositions’ parties worst apprehensions that holding MDCAT test all over the country where all the education institutions have been closed in the back drop of worsening Corona situation, would be suicidal. A gang of twenty students and two organizers involved in leaking the medical entry test paper were nabbed from Peshawar’s area of Tehkal Sunday wee hours
Reports say the gang leaked today’s medical entrance exam test paper hours before commencement of the test. The leaked paper was reportedly sold out to aspirants at few hundred thousand Rs per son. While the Pakistan Medical Commission claims the leaked papers were not the actual papers designed for Sunday’s test, the independent sources called the explanation an eye wash and insisted there have been gross irregularities in the important exams tests like the yester years.
Last year too, the FIA had arrested three people, including two government employees, for their alleged involvement in the leaking of even the CSS exam papers. On the other hand the government decision to hold the tests (previously used to be organized by the Evaluation and Testing Authority commonly known as ETEA test) through the newly constituted Pakistan Medical Commission under the title MDCAT and that too all over the country proved to be an exercise in futile as nor could the concerned authorities ensure transparency but also failed to hold the test in safer mode.
One doesn’t understand as to who put the novel idea of holding tests all over the country simultaneously, in the bosses of education ministry brain or for that matter Shafqat Mehmood. A survey conducted by the Pakistan Observer Sunday at various test centers in the provincial metropolis revealed that the much emphasized upon SOPs were not breached by the participants but the organizers themselves. The candidates called to report at the test centers at 8.30 were given the papers at 10.30 that led to a crowded situation inside and outside the halls where the aspirants were made to sit in a highly congested manner.
“Even a single candidate suffering from the COVID-19, is bound to pass on the deadly Virus to scores others in the over capacity halls where five hundred to eight hundred students were accommodated”. A student appearing in the test told Observer.
