Ernakulam Medical College faces funds crunch as government shuts down aid

KOCHI: The Ernakulam Medical College is facing a peculiar predicament with its fund sources getting dried up while the state government which took over the college recently not making available any money as it could not still untangle the technicalities involved in the takeover.

The main source of the fund for the college has been the fee paid by the students in the ongoing batches in the college who joined the college when it was a government self-financing college under the Co-operative Academy for Professional Education (CAPE).

But once it became a government college, the students refused to pay the fee saying they also should be allowed to give the government college fee which the students who have now joined in the fresh batch are paying.

“The students have approached Kerala High Court in this regard. They have refused to remit the fees which they are supposed to pay, saying that they will remit the fee only after the court decides on it. This has landed the college in trouble. So we don’t know how to run the college,” said a senior official at the college.

The shortage of funds has hit the ‘financial rolling’ undertaken by the officials which in turn has hit the implementation of the RSBY, RBSK-Arogya Kiranam and JSSK schemes at the hospital, which are mainly targeted at weaker sections.

“These are central and state government schemes, the money for which is mostly reimbursed by the governments at a later stage. Hence for implementing the schemes we need to find money initially but don’t know how,” said the official.