Foreign Medical Graduates (FMGs), a part of All India Medical Students’ Association-Foreign Medical Students’ Wing (AIMSA-FMSW), met key officers in the Health Department, including Special Chief Secretary M.T. Krishna Babu, this week and apprised them of issues impacting FMGs in the State. This follows their meeting with Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu last week.
According to a release from AIMSA-FMSW on Wednesday (February 5), the officers were said to have promised the AIMSA-FMSW team that the issuance of Permanent Registrations (PRs) to eligible FMGs would be expedited but sought fresh compensation letters from their parent universities. The PR would be issued after the verifying the compensation letters.
While those who compensated for their lost practical sessions and appeared for their final exams offline have compensatory certificates from their universities, the officers, according to the FMGs, have asked for fresh ones and more details regarding the duration of their stay in India during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To this, the FMGs said that getting fresh compensation letters from the foreign universities would be a daunting task. They said the universities would have to go through old records to provide all the details, a process, they said, that would take months.
“We graduated two years ago. Getting a fresh letter from the university now is extremely difficult for us. Many of us cannot afford to travel to Russia, Kyrgyzstan or other countries just for a hard copy of the letter. We have raised this point to the officers,” a member of the association said, adding that they also cannot afford to lose time since they are preparing for exams.
The FMGs hoped that the verification process, being followed by other States, is followed in Andhra Pradesh as well.
Meanwhile, the officials also promised them that Temporary Registrations (TRs) would be issued to those undergoing internships currently without TRs and No Objection Certificates (NOCs) to those who cleared the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination recently and were willing to undergo their mandatory internship in other States.
An official public notice clarifying the counselling guidelines is also expected soon, the team of FMGs, who visited the officials, said. They thanked the officials for lending a patient ear to their problems and responding positively.
Published – February 05, 2025 07:13 pm IST