MATS Students Protest At Shahbagh Demanding 4-Point Agenda

Medical Assistant Training School (MATS) students have staged a sit-in at Shahbagh in the capital, demanding immediate recruitment for vacant posts of Sub-Assistant Community Medical Officers and four other demands. They have warned they will not leave Shahbagh unless their demands are met.

The protest began on Sunday (February 9) around 11 a.m. when students gathered at Shahbagh, blocking traffic on the road from TSC to Shahbagh. Prior to this, the students assembled at Farmgate before heading to Shahbagh.

The MATS students have raised concerns that nearly 50,000 skilled graduates from the diploma medical course are unemployed, despite the fact that there are over 2,500 vacant Sub-Assistant Community Medical Officer posts in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The students claim that for over a decade, recruitment has been stalled under the pretext of revising recruitment procedures, leaving the marginalized communities without medical services and an increasing number of unemployed graduates.

The students' four demands include: providing opportunities for higher education as per the first five-year plan (1973-1978) of the Bangladesh government, immediate recruitment for the vacant Sub-Assistant Community Medical Officer posts, creating new positions for MATS-trained DMF diploma holders in community clinics, government and private hospitals, reinstating the four-year academic course with the previous one-year internship with allowances, correcting the course curriculum, and scrapping the proposed Allied Health Professional Education Board in favor of forming a new Medical Education Board of Bangladesh.

Ahmadullah Mansur, the central coordinator of the General MATS Students Unity Council, told the media that despite the July Revolution's push for a discrimination-free Bangladesh, MATS students have not seen the end of their long-standing inequities. He added that after a public gathering in Shahbagh on January 22, the Ministry of Health’s Secretary promised to fulfill their demands within seven working days, but there has been no visible action even after the deadline.

Mansur stated that since the ministry and relevant departments have not taken sincere actions, the students have taken to the streets again, holding the Ministry of Health, the Directorate of Health Education, the Directorate of Health, the Family Planning Directorate, and the Bangladesh Medical Faculty responsible for this movement.