In a first, Presidency fest money goes for Cov relief

Kolkata: The

Presidency University Students’ Union

has stepped forward to shoulder responsibility of university students who have been financially battered either by the pandemic or cyclone Yaas. The union has decided to use 30% of the corpus meant for fest and entertainment on scholarships to assist these students. The university authorities have also agreed to the union’s demand on waiver of semester fees for students in financial distress.

In addition, around 40% funds will be donated to the

Institute of Child Health

for the

Covid

treatment of children, so that it can augment its facilities for the next wave that some scientists predict will hit the children, said Debnil Paul, a post-graduate student of the university.

“After the odd semester started last November, we had demanded that the university should consider refunding the semester fee to those students who are facing a severe financial crunch. The authorities had then accepted our demand and had initiated a process of refund. However, it was stalled because the campus had shut down. That refund process has been restarted. We had placed a similar request for the current semester. The university has accepted to extend the same facility of fee-waiver for even-semester students who meet the criteria,” informed Paul.

University registrar

Debajyoti Konar

said, the concern of the students’ council has been discussed at a meeting of Students Welfare Board and three recommendations were made. These were approved by the competent authorities for implementation. Earlier in April, the Presidency University students had come together in the hour of crisis and had opened a page on social media where the real-time update of available hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, medicines, oxygen equipment was uploaded after after being verified by the students.

Students involved with the project said the initiative was taken to reduce the hassle that patients and their families were facing at the time by offering all relevant information on a single window.

“We understood that it is the need of the hour and patients together with their family members were running pillar to post to find beds and other relevant information. Thus, we started the initiative so that the page would help them as we were personally verifying the information before being updated,” a student pointed out.