The government in the face of student movement has decided to amend three laws to continue giving budgetary grants for academic activities of Jagannath University, Comilla University and Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University as is done with other public universities.
The proposed amendment would allow the government to continue funding the three public universities like it does for other public universities, the prime minister's press secretary Abul Kalam Azad quoted prime minister as saying when a Jagannath University delegation called on her on Wednesday.
After the government announcement, Jagannath University students who had rallied for amendments to the Jagannath University Act 2005 brought out a procession celebrating their achievement, with the government for the first time after 1991 conceding the demand of the students.
As the students had continued rallying, the Jagannath University delegation, led by the vice-chancellor, Mesbahuddin Ahmed, met the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to discuss the problems of the university.
The students had rallied for more than a year so that the university was given government support as is done with other public universities.
The students had demanded repeal of Section 27(4) of the Jagannath University Act 2005 which provisioned for the university to generate its own funds five years after its establishment and the five-year time frame expired in 2010.
The education secretary, Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, who attended the meeting, at a press briefing at the secretariat in the evening formally announced the decision on the amendment to the laws.
The related provisions in the Comilla University Act and in the Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University Act would also be amended and it would be done in the shortest possible time to continue with government grants to run the campuses, the education secretary said.
Naser said that the prime minister had ordered for amendments to the laws of the three universities.
The education secretary also said that the Jagannath University vice-chancellor
would take steps for the withdrawal of the cases filed against the university students, including the university correspondents of daily newspapers.
The Jagannath College, founded in 1884, was upgraded to a public university in 2005 with the enactment of the Jagannath University Act 2005.
Section 27(4) of the Jagannath University Act, however, stipulated that the university would run on public funds for five years and the university would need to generate its own funds after five years.
With support of the teachers, the students of the university in Old Town of Dhaka had for long demanded that the provision should have been scrapped.
Students had demanded repeal of the section of the act for long before they took to the streets on September 24 as the university increased the semester fees from Tk 3,500 to Tk 20,000 to increase its internal revenue.
Comilla University was set up in 2006 at Kotbari in the district headquarters and Kabi Nazrul University started its journey in 2006 at Trishal in Mymensingh with the enactment of the Comilla University Act 2006 and Jatiya Kazi Kabi Nazrul Islam University Act 2006.
Section 27(3) of both the acts stipulated that both the universities would need to be run on their own funds after 10 years of their establishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment