PANAJI
The Goa Dental College has rolled back the hike in fees of its post-graduate dental surgery course and issued an order in this regard on Wednesday.
Under Secretary (health) Trupti Manerkar issued the order which ‘revised’ the fees and restored the status quo vis-a-vis per semester fees to be paid by students pursuing the MDS course.
Earlier, by an order issued in December 2020, the Goa government had upwardly revised the fees and doubled them to Rs one-lakh per semester to bring parity with the fees charged for post-graduate degree courses at the Goa Medical College.
Accordingly, the order issued on Wednesday by Manerkar states that the existing per-semester fees of Rs one-lakh have been revised to Rs 48,000.
Manerkar said in her order that the “excess fees” already paid by the students will be either refunded or adjusted to future payments due from the students.
Also, instead of a lumpsum increase of fees in future, Manerkar said in her order said that the government has decided to introduce an automatic 5 per-cent increase every year for all courses at the Goa Dental College as well as the Goa Medical
College.
The steep hike in fees notified in December last year had triggered widespread protest among students and political parties too had joined in to criticize the government calling it insensitive to hike the fees particularly at the time of the pandemic.
Earlier on Wednesday, Aam Aadmi Party’s youth leader Dr Vibhas Prabhudesai had demanded a rollback of the fees. Earlier this week AAP’s State convenor Rahul Mahambre and also Porvorim MLA Rohan Khaunte had also highlighted the steep fee hikes and questioned the government’s logic.
“The fee hike by the Goa govt is highly condemnable and uncalled for. This will result in dreams of some aspirants being crushed. This decision must be revoked,” Dr Prabhudesai had tweeted on Wednesday and tagged Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane.
He followed up the tweet later with another one acknowledging the government decision to roll back the fees stating: “Good to know that the BJP Government realised the blunder committed by it. @AAPGoa firmly believes that at no cost shall public education be allowed to be a financial burden on the student community.”
