Rangamati Correspondent: Rangamati Medical College (RMC) was established in 2014 to spread medical science in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region. After its establishment, the first teaching activities started as a temporary campus in the 2014-15 academic year in the Coronary Care Unit building of Rangamati General Hospital. The institution has not seen the light of day even in a decade after the start of educational activities. Meanwhile, although about 26 acres of land were acquired in the Rangapani area of the Rangamati district town, the construction work of the permanent campus could not be started due to the failure to pass the Development Project Proposal (DPP). The infrastructural crisis of the medical college and the unfit environment for education have affected the students.
According to Rangamati Medical College sources, although 16 classrooms are required for teaching in the temporary building of the medical college, there are only five. Students take classes in a crowded manner. Before taking classes for one year, students from other years go and crowd in. There are a total of 324 students up to the fifth batch of the medical college. There are 77 teachers. Of these, 180 have completed the MBBS course. 75 new admissions are being made every session.
Students say that even after 10 years of the medical college’s journey, a permanent campus has not yet been opened. There are no adequate residential hostels to accommodate students. Although students are admitted every year, several important departments have not yet been opened. Due to the lack of alternative arrangements, classes, examinations, and office activities are being conducted under the same roof. Moreover, the lack of adequate classrooms, auditoriums, libraries, modern labs, and sewage systems for students is disrupting the educational environment. If students from other medical colleges that started at the same time can take classes on their own campuses, why can’t we take classes on our own campus after all these years? We have only been assured that there has been no progress in the work.
Meanwhile, on September 11 (Wednesday) of this year, students held a protest march and surrounded the public works building, demanding a permanent campus for Rangamati Medical College. At that time, they surrounded the main gate of the Public Works Building, and later a student delegation went to the office of Rangamati Public Works Department Executive Engineer Sharmi Chakma and interrogated him.
Minhajul Abedin, a student of the Medical College, said many other medical colleges in the country have been established along with Rangamati Medical College, but even though those medical colleges have received permanent campuses and hostels, we have not received them. When we go to present these demands to the higher authorities, the files are stuck, and no decision is being made, they say. However, the most urgent thing is to build a permanent campus. Because the land for the permanent campus has already been transferred.
Dr. Habibur Rahman Chowdhury, a teacher in the Cardiology Department of Rangamati Medical College, said that ten years ago, the college’s temporary campus activities started in an unused 5-story building built for the CCU next to the General Hospital. The number of students in the college is increasing every year. Due to which the crisis of classrooms is acute. Besides, there is no room for the teachers to sit, let alone accommodation. Due to which the teaching activities are being severely disrupted. The hospital is not in a position to hold clinical classes with 9 groups of 150 students every day. Therefore, it is not possible to take clinical classes unless the hospital is expanded and renovated.
When asked, Rangamati Medical Hospital Principal Professor Preeti Prasun Barua said, We have acquired the land. The project to build a permanent campus for Rangamati Medical College is stuck in the Ministry of Health and Family Planning. After approval, it will go to the Planning Commission. After that, if it is passed there, the project work can start.
Incidentally, the government took the initiative to establish Rangamati Medical College and Hospital to provide medical services to the marginalized population of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and to build higher educational institutions in the hills. The educational institution started its journey in 2014 despite strong opposition from the regional organizations of the hills, Parbatya Chittagong Jana Sanghati Samiti (JSS) and United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF). After its establishment, the temporary campus began operations in the five-story building of the Coronary Department of Rangamati General Hospital. That location has not changed yet.
