The Women’s Grievance Redressal Cell reconstituted by Ranchi University (RU) on January 5 last year is still without any office and is yet to have its committees in all the colleges under RU.
Despite being aware of this problem, university officials make lame excuses of manpower crunch and communication gap with the members of this cell.After the Delhi gang-rape incident on December 16, 2012 University Grants Commission (UGC) had instructed all the higher education institutions to construct a taskforce taking note over the security arrangements of female students.
Following this guideline, RU Vice-Chancellor Dr lN Bhagat had announced to reform this cell, which had remained inactive for past few years. A five-member women’s grievance redressal cell was then announced comprising only females with three members, member secretary and a chairperson. Member secretary’s phone number 9431101176 was notified through media for the girl students studying at RU in order to approach for any safety measures.
Talking to The Pioneer on Thursday, a university official informed that a letter from this cell was given to the V-C and several requests had been done but no action had been taken for office allotment. On hearing this Registrar Dr Amar Kumar Choudhary said, “We want to fulfil all these genuine hurdles but our hands are tied since there is lack of manpower and infrastructure. Now that you are pointing us, we hope to think of a concrete solution by the end of this academic session.” Pro-VC Dr M Raziuddin hesitated to speak over this issue saying “I am not the right person to answer.”
However, the formation of this active cell has helped the university in curbing college harassment incidents within the State capital up to certain extend. “We have received about 100 phone calls by female college goers including Ranchi Women’s College, Marwari Girls College and Doranda College. Ninety of them are related to eve-teasing. We have taken effective steps to tackle these with the help of police. Cops have increased security through frequent patrolling near these colleges. Undergraduate students are usually victimised to this eve teasing. Calls regarding domestic violence were also made. We rejected the latter as our duty is to look incidents happening within college premises,” Member secretary Dr Renu Dewan said.
Highlighting the failure of this cell due to the above mentioned hurdles, a university staff on the condition of anonymity said, “This cell is the central committee of its type at the university level. Similar committees were supposed to be made in all the rural and urban colleges as well as post graduate departments of RU but few colleges have implemented this instruction. Moreover, there is no official record on how many colleges have implemented it.”
“The centralised cell was scheduled to organise workshops, training programmes and counseling sessions for both boys and girls on this crime against women issue. Nothing could be done as there is no proper room for members to hold discussion,” added the staff.