Varsities reopen today for UG, PG final year students
BHUBANESWAR: Degree colleges, universities, technical and professional institutions in the state will be reopened from Monday for final year UG, PG and diploma programmes for academic year 2020-21. The institutions are all prepared to welcome students for physical classes after a gap of more than nine months due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Both higher education department along with skill development and technical education department has issued orders for commencement of physical classes. It has also issued standard operating procedure (SOP) and Covid guidelines to hold the offline classes.
According to the government orders, hostels of degree colleges, diploma institutions and universities under these two departments opened on Sunday for students after taking all measures to make the hostels habitable. Though some universities were planning to allow students only with Covid negative certificate, the idea was dropped keeping the difficulties in mind.
Besides repair works of hostels, premier Utkal University has cleaned and sanitised its classrooms and office premises. It has three constituent colleges and 373 affiliated colleges in nine districts. “Hostels are opened for final year students by following SOP of the higher education department,” said university vice-chancellor, Sabita Acharya.
Fakir Mohan University vice-chancellor, Dinabandhu Sahoo, said they have formed a committee to look into the reopening process of the university by following the government guidelines. “Hostels are reopened for final-year students after proper sanitisation. A senior professor is looking after the security and sanitation part of the university. Canteen of the university will be reopened for students,” he added.
Sahoo personally reviewed the preparations. “We have reserved 10 rooms inside the university which can be used as isolation facility for students if they get infected with corona. We have informed the FM Medical College and Hospital, Balasore, to help us if needed. According to our statistics, we have 724 final year PG students on our university main campus. As many as 271 (176 girls and 95 boys) will be staying in the hostels,” he added.