Update Regarding the Ongoing Agitation: Alternative Accommodation Accepted As Part of Demands! We would like to inform the student community that after an initial period of hesitation, the JNUSU finally ACCEPTED the SFI’s longstanding demand that ‘DECENT ALTERNATIVE ACCOMMODATION’ must be part of the list of agendas that have been taken up for the ongoing hunger strike. After a successful signature campaign carried out by the SFI with more than 1100 signatures collected, the JNUSU was forced to accept that alternative accommodations is a necessary and immediate demand raised by the student community as an interim resolution to the hostel crisis that exists on this campus. In an All Organisation meeting held on the 20th of January, 2015, the JNUSU President raised for the first time the need to think along the lines of Alternative accommodation and asked other organisations participating in the hunger strike to come up with suggestions for the same. The Vice Chancellor met the students on strike today (21.1.15) and informed them that the engineering department was looking into the conversion of the old CRS engineering store (located near Damodar Hostel) into a residential space for students. According to the department this structure will be able to house about 150 students. While it is a welcome suggestion, a lot of preparatory work needs to be done to convert the store into a proper residential space. This, in turn means that the engineering department has to float tenders for the same and once the tender is finalised and award letter is issued only then can the construction begin. This, like the extension of Damodar, is bound to take up some more months. Secondly as had been pointed out in an earlier release by the SFI, even now more than 600 students do not have a hostel, a situation that is likely to worsen exponentially with each new batch till new hostels come up. The plans for Old CRS Engg. Store is definitely an advance but it can at best offer a partial solution that too only after a couple of months of time. The SFI since the beginning of the hostel crisis has been stressing that along with existent structures on this campus, given the size of this crisis it is essential that we look for alternative accommodation off campus (preferably not far from JNU). Making accommodation facilities outside available has been done successfully in the past in the late nineties as a result of the agitation by the SFI-led JNUSU, when such measures eased the hardship of the students to a considerable extent. Given the fact that WE NEED AN IMMEDIATE RESOLUTION TO THE HOSTEL CRISIS on this campus, the SFI requests the JNUSU to intensify the present struggle. We need to keep exploring the possibility of opening up more buildings within JNU for putting up students without hostels, while in the immediate, a fund needs to be established by the University in order to hire out buildings to accommodate students till hostels and other suitable buildings within the campus become ready for use. TOKEN, PARTIAL AND VERBAL assurances should not be allowed to dilute the struggle that we have been waging.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 19:09:37 +0000
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