PESHAWAR - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has accorded approval to the establishment of a full-fledged Dental College in Kohat and directed the authorities for arranging the required funds and building for the purpose.
The college named Institute of Dental Sciences will be established under Khyber Medical University equipped with all the required facilities of dentistry. It will be a teaching institute imparting MBBS and other higher education on the subject. Similarly millions of population of southern districts, it will cater for the dental treatment needs of Parachinar, Miranshah, FATA and the other side vicinities of attock and Nizampur.
To this effect a high-level meeting was held with Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at the chair at Chief Minister Secretariat Peshawar and attended by Health Minister Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, VC Khyber Medical University Prof Dr Mohammad HafeezUllah, Controller Dr Fazal Mehmood, Secretary Higher Education Farah Hamid, Special Secretary Health Akbar Khan and other relevant quarters of finance and law departments. The meeting reviewed in detail the needs for the establishment of the college and the hardships being faced in this regard.
The Chief Minister directed the authorities to immediately remove all the impediments in the establishment of the proposed college. It is worth a mention here that under KMU a faculty for imparting education up to MBBS in dentistry was already working at Kohat Township but due to non-existence of higher medical education and dental treatment and diagnostic facilities therein, patients of the southern districts were referred to the teaching hospitals of Peshawar, and they suffered a lot due to burden of patients on Peshawar hospitals and closure of Kohat tunnel mostly. Thus the need for a dental institute to fulfill the needs of the southern district was severely being felt; and taking notice of the same the Chief Minister paved the way to solve the long lasted problems of the local people. He nodded to utilize the building of Frontier Education Foundation Authority (FEFA) situated near the existing dental faculty at Kohat township for the purpose and directed the high ups of higher education for prompt action in this regard.
The Chief Minister also directed the relevant authorities to release a fund of Rs 85 million for the establishment of a new dental ward of 20 beds and 75 dental chairs in the college, which will enable the faculty to meet the requirements of PMDC to be a full fledge college. Besides it will also enable the Institute thereafter to provide treatment and check-up facilities to hundreds of dental patients daily.
It was told on the occasion that besides facilities of teaching, research and treatment, the institute will have nine different specialties of dental surgery; and as such it will provide additional treatment facilities to the patients of the Divisional Headquarters Hospital as well. Talking to the participants the Chief Minister said that establishment of the dental college was a component of the Health Emergency Program of the provincial government which would cater for both the treatment and teaching requirements of the people of southern district simultaneously. He said that provision of better health and education facilities to the people ranked at the top of the provincial government priority list and all the available resources would be utilized for the purpose. However, he said, instead of hallow slogans and mere lip services like the past regimes, our government will make realistic and practicable decisions. The Chief Minister vowed that besides efforts to curb corruption and change the system, the provincial government would also focus on the public welfare at the same time.