Several education entities and bodies including FSFTI (Federation of Self-Financing Technical Institutions), PUCA (Punjab Unaided Technical Institutions Association (PUTIA) have come ahead to offer their campuses as isolation centers.
The respective President of these bodies have written a letter to PM Narendra Modi and Punjab’s CM Captain Amarinder Singh informing about the intended support. They said that all the technical institutions across the country will offer their campuses, hostels, paramedical staff of nursing and pharmacy for isolation and care.
In a similar proposal, recently Mohan Khatal, Joint Director of Directorate of Higher Education, Pune division too offered 27 hostels with 5,500 rooms for setting up of isolation wards, if needed.
He quoted, “A meeting was held to discuss on precautionary measures for the state. In very next few hours, we informed the availability of 5,500 rooms at universities and colleges. Most rooms belong to engineering colleges as we found that they had better facilities.”
On the other hand, the reputed University of Maharastra — a state that is badly affected of COIVID-19 – Savitribai Phule University only offered Academic Staff College (ASC) hostel to district administration. The VC of the University, Nitin Karmalkar explained, “We have hostels but the rooms are occupied with the belongings of students. Hence, these rooms cannot be given.”
The ASC hostel has 52 rooms with good facilities.