The administration of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University (SBWU), Peshawar, is yet to vacate the building of Government Frontier College for Women though construction of the varsity’s own building has been completed recently, sources said.
They said that the presence of several departments of SBWU had been affecting studies of hundreds of girls’ students of the college.
The Higher Education Department, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has time and again asked the SBWU administration to vacate the building of the girls’ college in the best interest of its students, but the university administration has turned down the directives each time, they said.
The SBWU has been functioning in some buildings of the college since its establishment in 2005, causing shortage of classrooms for the college’s own students, the sources said, adding that this had been seriously affecting academic activities in the college.
Presently, the departments of the university are scattered in three different areas, having 10 to 15 kilometres distance from each other. Eight departments of the SBWU are functioning in its own building in Larama area; seven in a bungalow in the university Town and four other departments and its administration are in the college building, the sources said. They added that it was impossible to effectively administer the scattered departments of the university from a distance.The sources said that construction work on the university building had almost been completed on 400 kanals at a cost of Rs600 million in Larama village on the outskirts of Peshawar. However, the administration of the university was reluctant to shift to the new building, they said.
“Actually, it is convenient for the top officials of the university administration to continue in the college building otherwise if the university is completely shifted to its new building then these officials will have to travel for 10 kilometres away from the city,” the sources claimed while indicating at the delay on the part of SBWU.
The college building occupied by the university is direly required for the college to accommodate its own students of Bachelor of Studies programme, sources in the college told Dawn. “Some of the hostel’s rooms are being used as classrooms for the students as they couldn’t be accommodated in the existing classrooms,” an official of the college said.The sources said that they had requested the HED several times to direct the university to vacate the building, but in vain.
Asked about reasons for not vacating the college building, the SBWU, Peshawar, registrar Ms Zuhra told Dawn that the administration was unable to shift to its new building because of security reasons.
She said that they had liaison officers sitting in the university buildings at university town and Larama area. She said that the newly constructed building was insufficient to accommodate all the SBWU students and that was why the university was scattered. The registrar said that the college building would not be vacated until the government provided proper and secure building to the university.
However, the sources said that if hundreds of girl students and their teachers of the eight departments in Larama area could go daily to the university then how was it insecure for the university administration.
Source: Dawn News.
