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Anna Uni’s hostels and auditorium to be converted into 2000-bed COVID Care Centre

The university had initially refused to provide buildings to the GCC since the rooms had students’ belongings.

A long-pending tug of war between the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) and Anna University came to an end on Sunday as the institution agreed to provide more hostels to the city administration to be used as COVID-19 Care Centre. The GCC is planning to convert the university into a COVID-19 Care Centre with 2,000 beds. 

According to reports, four hostels in the College of Engineering (CEG) campus in Guindy and an auditorium might be handed over to the GCC to be converted into COVID Care Centres. Though the GCC had sent a notice to the university to allow it to set up a care centre inside its premises, the university was holding back from handing over the hostels since many PhD scholars had left their belongings back in the rooms that are currently locked. During the negotiations held on Saturday between the GCC officials and the institution, the university agreed to hand over the hostel rooms if the GCC allowed students to come and take back their belongings with them. 

On Sunday, E Natarajan, the Anna University Dean, sent a message to all the students to collect their things from their hostel rooms. The message also said that the GCC will arrange for the students to travel to the city and back for this purpose. The communication sent to the students also said that this is a moment to show solidarity and that they can either come in person to take back their things or assign a guardian or anybody else to do it for them.

The university has already handed over a few facilities in its Knowledge Park and the postgraduate hostel to the GCC to set up quarantine facilities to manage COVID-19. The university has around 15 hostels in four blocks which houses around 4,000 students from undergraduate programmes to PhD. 

COVID-19 Care Centres will be used to house patients who present with mild symptoms. 

Source: The News Minute