After the meeting with the press secretary of the Chief Adviser, what the outsourcing employees said

The students of Dhaka University's (DU) affiliated government seven colleges of the capital have started a movement to demand the establishment of a separate independent university for the seven colleges.

More than 1000 students from seven colleges started gathering at Dhaka College from 11:00 on Monday (October 21). After that, they came out of the campus with a protest procession and stayed at Sainslab and Neelkhet junction.

Traffic was disrupted in Sainslab, New Market and Neelkhet areas as students protested on the streets.

The students who were present at the time asked, 'Affiliation or liberation, liberation, liberation', 'Education trade, don't accept, don't accept', 'No more slavery, we want to be independent', 'DHA instead of DU, get seven colleges free', 'Oppression or not?' Rights, rights, rights', 'Mani Na Manabo Na' etc. slogans were seen chanting.

Meanwhile, the students who participated in the protest told Gana Madhyam, 'In 2017, seven government colleges of the capital were affiliated to Dhaka University on the orders of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. However, this decision was completely unplanned. As a result, the goals and objectives with which the colleges were affiliated could not be achieved even in 8 years. On the contrary, the education life of the students of these colleges has come down to extreme chaos. In one word, instead of improving the quality of education, students have been deprived of proper educational opportunities due to various discriminatory policies and administrative weaknesses of the DU administration.

They said, 'We think that one of the major problems faced by the seven college students under DU is the lack of individual institutional identity. Apart from this, lack of department-wise quality teachers, inadequacy of research opportunities, absence of academic calendar, severe classroom crisis, lab crisis, housing problem, transportation crisis, delay in publishing results, academic syllabus being incomplete and mass failure in examination evaluation, these problems have been going on unsolved for a long time. We do not want a continuation of such complications. We want a solution.'

Abdur Rahman, the focal point of the seven college university transformation team and a student of zoology department of Dhaka College, said, 'Students have now raised the demand of an autonomous or independent public university consisting of seven colleges. In order to implement this demand, we have already given a memorandum to the Education Advisor, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, the Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University. But I did not get any kind of response from any of the concerned authorities within the stipulated time. Their silence has forced us to take to the streets.'

At the time, they also raised 3-point demands. They are –

1. A reform committee should be formed at the earliest with a view to making it an autonomous public university with seven colleges.

2. The reform committee will discuss with the teachers-students and stakeholders of the seven colleges within a maximum of 30 working days to formulate the framework for establishing only one independent university comprising the seven colleges.

3. The reform committee will work in coordination with Dhaka University administration to keep the current structure functioning. So that regular students' sessions do not create any kind of complicated environment.

Incidentally, on February 16, 2017, seven colleges of the capital were affiliated to Dhaka University by the Ministry of Education with the aim of improving the standard of traditional education at the direction of the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The colleges are Dhaka College, Eden Women's College, Govt. Shaheed Suhrawardy College, Kabi Nazrul Govt. College, Begum Badrunnecha Govt. Women's College, Govt. Bangla College and Govt. Titumir College. The admission process, examination, education program of the students of the affiliated colleges have been conducted from Dhaka University since then.