Nine-member Asian Development Bank team visits Maharani’s College to inspect collapsed area and fund the restoration

Mysuru: A nine-member team of officials from Asian Development Bank (ADB) visited Government Maharani’s Arts and Science College for Women, on JLB Road in city this morning.

The ADB team included — Principal Social Sector Specialist Fook Yen Chang, Senior Labour Economist Mohammed Faiz Shaul Hameed, Higher Education Specialist and Commission Lead for the project Nahyum Kin, Senior Project Officer (Education) Poonam Sharma Bambri, Higher Education expert Shaun M. Wellbourne Wood, Procurement and Project Implementation expert Yashpal Mallik, Higher Education Innovation Specialist Samuel K.W. Ang, expert in EV, Renewable Energy, Research Development David and expert in Work Force Development, Health, Health Care Information, Intelligence System and Project Implementation Leah Mc Manus.

At Jayalakshmammanni auditorium of Arts College, Principal Prof. M.S. Rajashekar Murthy and his Science College counterpart Dr. M. Abdul Rahiman, through Power-Point Presentation (PPT) explained the visiting ADB officials about the current status of the heritage structure, that is crumbling at places.

The Principals explained about the dilapidated condition of library, auditorium, compound walls, class rooms, toilets and several other basic infrastructural facilities, to the ADB officials.

The ADB team was later taken around the campus on inspection, during which they interacted with teaching faculty, students, alumni, parents of the students and others.

Since 2022…

It may be mentioned, the roof of laboratory of Maharani’s Science College had collapsed in October 2022. Since then, the part of the building was being unused, but the worst fears came when a worker was killed in January this year, when a part of the building collapsed further, while dismantling the building materials to facilitate demolition and reconstruction works.

MoU with DCTE

The inspection visit of ADB team was a part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Government of Karnataka, College and Technical Education Department with ADB in 2023, following which Karnataka Higher Education Transformation Project was launched.

Under this project, 440 Government First Grade Colleges, 107 Polytechnic and 16 Engineering Colleges were identified to improve their basic amenities to facilitate the students employability skills, by advancing loan to the tune of Rs. 2,500 crore.

The ADB team had visited colleges in Ramanagara and Channapatna yesterday.

Director of Collegiate and Technical Education Department Dr. G. Shobha, Project Assistant (Technical) Kiran Kumar, Special Officer, Collegiate and Technical Education Department, Ramesh Reddy, Regional Joint Director of Collegiate Education Department, Mysuru, Prof. B. Chandrashekar and others were present.