‘Direct classes a risk as colleges are still used as COVID care centres’

Opposing the state’s decision to reopen colleges for undergraduate final year students, higher education institution faculties say it would be a risk to conduct classes as still normalcy have not been fully restored from the COVID-19 pandemic situation. “Though faculties were readily available at all the colleges at present, taking classes at this point of time for the students would be a risk,” N Pasupathy, Association of University Teachers (AUT) said. Pointing out that many colleges were converted into COVID-19 care centres, he said, “these institutions will be affected if other colleges were opened.” Claiming that most of the students in higher education institutions have already completed the portions through online, he said there is no point in forcing them to attend the classes when still there are active COVID-19 cases. He also said, “it was also unclear that how many parents would send their children to classes since government did not got the feedback from them as it was done to the schools.”