Dental unit of Rajshahi Medical College (RMC) has not yet been turned into a full fledged dental college even after construction of four storied infrastructure and procurement of necessary instruments at a cost of Taka 10 crore four years ago.
The newly constructed building which is supposed to be used as administrative and academic building of the dental college has also been handed over to the authorities of RMC couple of years back. But, the newly constructed building remained unused so far due to undefined reason.
According to the sources concerned, the dental unit of RMC was declared as a separate dental college by the government around 25 years ago. But, it is still continuing its activities under RMC as dental unit at the old building of the now defunct Sadar Hospital.
Even, posts of teachers and employees for a separate college have not yet been created rather the unit is being run by some teachers appointed under deputation.
Though 50 chairs are required for students, there are only 20 and nearly half of those chairs are out of order. Teachers and interns-doctors themselves bear the salary of three employees. There are only seven appointed technologists at the unit at present.
Sources added that According to Rajshahi dental unit sources of RMC, the government declared the unit as a full fledged dental college in 1989 when only 20 students were studying there.
The BDS (Bachelor of Dental Surgery) course was then started under RMC but there were no rooms for holding classes and no required teachers and employees for conducting the classes.
Under such situation, the dental unit was transferred to Sadar Hospital in 1994-95 academic year, the number of seats of students was increased to 50 from 20.
But, till now, no sufficient posts for required teachers and staff have been created for running the unit smoothly. Presently, there are only 17 teachers in this unit and all of them work on deputation from various upazila health complex.
