KARACHI, Oct 30: The government-run Jungle Shah degree college entered its second academic session recently with the induction of 200-odd students. However, a lot still needs to be done vis-a-vis availability of classrooms, laboratories and teaching and non-teaching staff, said students and teachers alike.

Meaningful teaching is yet to be undertaken at the institution, situated in Keamari area, they said. Classes are held in an extremely haphazard fashion at odd places like laboratories and playground.

Last year admission to the first year classes was delayed for a considerable length of time as rangers were reluctant to vacate the college premises which they had been occupying for the past several years. It was only due to the efforts of Karachi’s Nazim, and some other senior officials, that rangers had agreed to vacate the ground floor of the three-storey college building. Speaking at a press conference the Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, had announced that rangers would leave, but in phases.

Today the ground floor of the building, having big laboratories, is not proving satisfactory for holding the classes in commerce, humanities and science, students and faculty told Dawn the other day. They pointed out that since classes were being held in the laboratories, practical work was being affected adversely.

According to the students, teachers were not available in adequate numbers. Lat year the practical work for first year science students had to be arranged at some other college, which discouraged and demotivated them.

While the second year classes in the three faculties have commenced this year, the college has the services of only five teachers who were deputed to the institution by the city government’s education department under an interim arrangement last year. So far not a single teacher has been appointed in the commerce discipline, while there is a shortage of teachers for Urdu, English, Islamiyat, chemistry and some other humanities subjects too.

In order to adequately run at least one section of one faculty, there is a need of about a dozen teachers, while appointment of technical and administrative staff as well as scientific equipment and library books are awaited also.

Referring to the presence of rangers personnel in the college, a teacher said classes were being held in the laboratories since all the classrooms were under the use of the law-enforcement people. However, in view of the admission of new students and a pressing need for establishing laboratories the college building must be vacated completely by the rangers, he added.

As per the original building plan the classrooms existed on second and third floors. A couple of months ago the principal had informed his superiors of the situation but to no avail, said one student.

When contacted, the Executive District Officer (Higher Education), Prof Rais Alvi, said the problems of the college were in the knowledge of senior officials and efforts were being made to resolve those. He said the DCO Karachi had approached the department concerned for vacation of the floors which were under the use of the rangers personnel, he added.