Bengaluru: Following fears that the upcoming Metro station at Bamboo Bazaar could lead to the closure of an institute for students with special needs, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) has promised to help relocate the institute.
Earlier, 65 special students who were staring at a bleak future due to the imminent demolition of their training centre, can hope to continue their education. Twenty students who stay at this training centre won’t be homeless after BMRCL responded positively to a change.org petition that went viral.
Towards the end of June, BMRCL was about to demolish the Technical Training Centre for the Deaf in Shivajinagar to make way for the Cantonment Metro Station in Bamboo Bazaar. Two women change-makers, Pooja Sharma from Jaipur and Namrata Sharma from West Champaran in Bihar, who were part of a recent, ‘She Creates Change’ program of change.org in Bengaluru, noticed these media reports and started a petition on the platform asking for these students to be immediately rehabilitated.
Their petition resonated with Bengaluru citizens and was widely shared on social media for two weeks, following which BMRCL issued a statement on July 13 clarifying that the students will be shifted to a new building for which the rent would be paid by BMRCL till the end of the academic year. BMRCL said they had learnt that 20 of the students would graduate this year, the rest of them would finish their training next year, and that the work on the site would begin only after all of them are shifted to the new building.
“The BMRCL will start its work only after the institute is shifted to new premises and would pay the rent till the scheduled completion of the course of the current batch of students," a BMRCL official told Deccan Chronicle.
