Berhampur: Even though the only Ayurvedic college in south Odisha, the Kabiraj Ananat Tripathy Sharma (KATS) Ayurvedic College and Hospital at Akushpur here, received government recognition 40 years ago, many of its problems still remain unresolved.
The shortage of lecturers and non-teaching staff continues to haunt the college even though the government granted permission to increase seats in 2018-19 academic year.
Now the college’s hostel is facing a severe water problem. Besides, there is no safe drinking water facility as well as regular water supply.
The college authorities had approached the public health department four years ago, but to no avail.
The current strength of KATS is 360 students and 40 of them stay in the campus hostel.
Two of the four bore wells here are defunct. The water output of one of the bore wells decreases during summer. Due to these problems the college authorities are unable to meet water needs of the campus.
This year the water yield from one of the bore wells has decreased already. As a result, water is not being supplied to the hostel for the last five days. Water is being supplied to the college and hospital only for some hours.
This same problem existed during the last four summers in the college. Students said they had often complained regarding this to the sub-collector, BDO and the public health department in vain.
Principal Bipin Bihari Khuntia said they had taken up the matter with revenue divisional commissioner (RDC) in February.
The RDC has instructed the Berhampur water supply project’s chief construction engineer to quickly solve the problems February 12. But the public health department has not done anything even after a month.
A proposal was submitted to construct an overhead tank and install a rainwater harvesting system on the campus. But that has not been approved.
A 200-bed ladies hostel is being constructed inside the campus. The students’ union has warned that if a permanent solution is not found for the water problem they will hold a protest.
PNN