In over eight months, Calcutta University has failed to find an agency to shift the engineering workshop from its Ballygunge campus to the Salt Lake campus, officials of the university said.
The delay means more waste of time for students who have to shuttle between two campuses at least thrice a week.
The inconvenience it causes, many teachers feel, discourages deserving students from taking up the university’s four-year BTech programme.
BTech students whose classes are held on the Salt Lake campus, are being forced to travel to Ballygunge Science College to take lessons in engineering mechanics and drawing in the workshop.
Vice-chancellor Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee had in August said the workshop on the Salt Lake campus would be made operational by the time CU’s BTech students (those in the first semester) are promoted to the second semester in January.
Sankhayan Chowdhury, a professor in the computer science and engineering department, said engineering students whose classes are held on the Salt Lake campus, have no option but to travel to Ballygunge ever since the university had introduced the four-year BTech programme in eight disciplines, including computer science and engineering and information technology, in 2015.
Only the Ballygunge campus has a workshop, which was set up in 2000 for the students of the four-year BTech course in jute and fibre technology.
“In August we were told a work order to dismantle the workshop on the Ballygunge campus and fetch some machines from Rajabazar science college had been issued. The 6,000sq ft workshop on the Salt Lake campus would be opened when the current first semester students are promoted to the second year,” said Chowdhury.
“This inordinate delay seven years after the launch of the programmes reflects the incompetence of the administration”.
Second-semester students in the four-year BTech course have to compulsorily attend workshop classes.
Repeated calls to VC Chakravarti Banerjee went unanswered.
“The workshop on the Salt Lake campus will be made operational by the time
CU’s BTech students are promoted to the second semester. They don’t have to take the trouble of travelling to Ballygunge Science College anymore,” she had told The Telegraph on August 31.
A university official said the delay happened because they floated tender repeatedly since August to carry out the task of dismantling and reinstalling the facilities, but did not find any takers.
“No one participated in the three tenders. In the fourth tender that was floated last month, an agency has been selected. We hope that by the time the new semester begins from next July, the workshop could be made operational,” he said.
A teacher of the information technology department said when the campus was shut down for close to two years because of the Covid, the university should have been able to start the workshop.
“Over the past two years classes had to be held over digital platforms and therefore there was no scope of taking lessons in the workshop.
But now the offline classes have resumed following a dip in cases and with students having been promoted to second-year, the classes on engineering workshops have been resumed as well,” he said.
“They are again going to Ballygunge, as they used to before the pandemic”.
The long commute from Salt Lake to Ballygunge, apart from inconveniencing students, eats into their time for theoretical classes he said.
These days if you don’t provide the required infrastructure, a bright student will not enroll, he said.