SPPU completes fire and electrical audit for entire campus

After the tragic fire incident of Bhandara district hospital last month, the state government ordered to conduct a safety audit of all the hospitals across Maharashtra and government buildings

After the tragic fire incident of Bhandara district hospital last month, the state government ordered to conduct a safety audit of all the hospitals across Maharashtra and government buildings.

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Accordingly, the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) conducted a structural and electrical audit of its entire campus, all the departments and hostels. The audit was done by a private agency, with few changes and replacements to be done the audit was done carefully and further work has started.

“Basically, after the Bhandara fire incident, the state government had made it mandatory that at least we should go for a structural and electrical audit of the residing facilities mostly the hostels as such. Accordingly, it has been communicated to the colleges affiliated with SPPU and they can get it done from a private agency. On one side we have to take care of students’ safety and therefore it is a welcome decision,” said SPPU vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar.

“At the SPPU university campus, we have done it for the entire infrastructure that exists. In fact, barring the hostels, most of the departments were open during the Covid period. As research and other things were ongoing, students were not there but teachers came in regularly. Therefore, barring hostels rest all the things are in place and especially for the hostels the audit has been done. We are taking due care of sanitization and other safety measures, perhaps we would soon formulate the process like there should be a person looking after the opening of the campus.” added Karmalkar.

While giving the details of the audit done at the university campus, SPPU registrar Prafulla Pawar said, “We have done a complete audit of university campus from an independent electrical and fire consultant in the last one month. They conducted the audit and checked all the closed hostels, departments and accordingly gave the correction report to the university. It includes minor changes at the hostel buildings. There are around 60 buildings which include the various teaching departments and the hostel buildings, all of these buildings went through the audit.”

According to Pawar, from February 15, the university began offline lectures, but the student response has been on the lower side.

“But we are hoping that gradually students will start coming to the university campus. For hostels to be allocated to the students we are following UGC guidelines, and it will be given in a phase-wise manner. For research students, a single seated room is given and then PhD hostels will be opened from February 22. Only then will the process for new hostel admissions start,” added Pawar.