Srinagar: The Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) Awantipora has rushed to resume offline class work and examination of the students without ensuring proper facilities in the hostels.
While the varsity administration has resumed offline classes to conduct the examination in the offline mode, it has not facilitated the students with the basic facilities at their respective hostels.
The university has resumed offline classes for the past more than one week but the students do not have geysers available in their washrooms in this chilly weather, leaving students high and dry.
“In this cold weather we have to wash our faces with cold water as there are no heating arrangements for us,” said a student, who wished not to be named.
Besides heating arrangements in washrooms, the students are not provided proper breakfast and are denied dinner as well.
“We are not given morning tea here at the hostel and have to go to outside dhabas to have it. At times, we are not given dinner as well as the university is yet to streamline the functioning of the hostel mess,” another student said.
Not only the boys hostel but the problem persists in the girls hostel too.
The female students complained that they were not given dinner for two nights as the cook was not available in the hostel mess.
“We fail to understand if the hostels were not ready why the university started offline classes,” a female student said.
The students said that they approached the concerned officials but their pleas fell to deaf ears.
“The officials play delaying tactics to avoid any confrontation with the students but we are really suffering. The university should not have started the hostels if they had not installed heating facilities and streamlined the functioning of the hostel mess,” the students said.
Talking to Greater Kashmir, Dean Students IUST, Anisa Jan, who is also the in-charge of the hostels, admitted that the students were facing problems in the hostels and said that the boys’ hostel was earlier functioning from a rented building.
“We have recently started the hostel in our own building as the buildings were handed over to the varsity by the builder a month ago,” she said. “Some minor works including facility of geysers and functioning of the mess were pending as the university had to follow a tendering process to get these works done.”
She said that the waiting period of tenders for mess and procurement of geysers were complete and that the varsity would open the tenders and get the issues resolved within a week’s time.
However, the students refused to buy this argument saying that these claims were being made by the officials for the past two weeks.
“We went with our grievances to the Dean Students 15 days ago and she assured us that all the facilities will be put in place within a week but till date nothing has happened. The administration is buying time and doing nothing on the ground,” a student said.
Registrar IUST, Prof Naseer Iqbal told Greater Kashmir that the girls hostels were functioning normally and issues regarding hostel mess were being resolved as well.