NIPER students protest lack of facilities

Ahmedabad Mirror Bureau; Thursday, September 20, 2012 Frequent power outages and poor facilities have forced the pharma students to go on an indefinite strike; institute says it is only interested in academics  Students of National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) are up in the arms against the institute’s administration for poor sanitation and drinking water facilities and frequent power outages. The institute is being run from the PERD Centre since 2007. For the past 20 days, there has been no electricity at the institute, say postgraduate students who are on an indefinite strike. They say they will continue the protest till their demands are met.   However, the institute authorities have made it very clear that they are only interested in academics at this point of time. “We have come here after clearing two entrance exams. For a pharmacy student, getting admission into NIPER is equivalent to getting admission into IIM or IIT. We have students from across the country studying here. But look at the facilities we get,” said Dipen Patel, a second year student.  The students have submitted their grievances in writing to the administration. But even on the second day of the strike on Wednesday, there was no response from the institute. Harsh Shah, a first year student, said, “We do not even have professors to teach us. We depend on PhD students to handle the apparatus as we are not allowed to use them on our own.”   As if the existing problems were not enough, even a five-minute delay in arriving in the classroom would mean a cut in the stipend, complain students. “We get a monthly stipend of Rs 8,000 which comes to approx Rs 260 per day. But if we are late by even five minutes in class, sometimes Rs 600 is cut. I fail to understand why,” says Komal Patel, an second year student. More........