AUW starts constructing permanent campus today
PM to inaugurate the work
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presides over a cabinet meeting at Bangladesh Secretariat in the city yesterday. Photo: PID
The construction work of the permanent campus of Asian University for Woman (AUW) begins in Chittagong city today, after seven years into the groundbreaking. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as the chief guest will lay the foundation stone of the AUW main campus in North Pahartali, a picturesque hilly area of the port city. AUW Director (Space Planning and Special Project) Jerina Hossain said the campus will be built over around 131.37 acres of hilly and plain land and hoped to begin academy activities there in 2013. AUW started its academic calendar on the temporary campus constituted of five rented buildings on Dampara MM Ali Road in the port city on April 6, 2008. It began with the total enrolment of 129 students from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka while the number of students now rose to more than 450. Former prime minister Khaleda Zia unveiled a plaque for the construction of AUW campus and attended the groundbreaking ceremony on January 13, 2004. For the delay in the construction, a section of BNP led four-party coalition government was blamed, which was said to try to shift the campus to Bogra. Absence of the loop road is another cause. Before building the campus, it became necessary to construct a loop road making diversion of Dhaka-Chittagong Highway-Bayezid Bostami connecting road by the north side of the university. Responding to the need of AUW, Chittagong Development Authority (CDA) had made a DPP (Development Project Proforma) to construct the loop road at an estimated cost of over Tk 19.68 crore. But the loop road project got caught in different complexities delaying the campus construction. After the present government was formed, the CDA constructed the road and handed it over to AUW authority. AUW campus is being built with support of individual philanthropists from different countries, including the USA, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia, Thailand, Japan, and Kuwait. The university started its journey with the vision and commitment to educating the young women with talents to take up the future leadership across the globe.
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