THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Oommen Chandy on Friday slammed chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan for blaming A K Antony for the self-financing college mess. In a statement here, Chandy said that the chief minister was targeting Antony to hide his failures in finding a solution to the self-financing college fee issue. The state would always remember with gratitude the revolutionary changes made by Antony in the higher education sector.
The former chief minister said that Antony government had decided to start self-financing colleges following exodus of students in hundreds to the neighbouring states for pursuing higher education. Such a bad situation had developed because facilities had not been put in place for higher education and the state was finding it difficult to come out of it.
Chandy said till 2001, Kerala had only five government medical colleges and 12 engineering colleges. Now apart from the existing government medical colleges, there are 24 self-financing medical colleges and 119 engineering colleges, nursing schools, pharmacy colleges and institutions for management studies. “We achieved this because of Antony government’s vision,”
he said.
The former chief minister said that Pinarayi Vijayan government was completely responsible for the issues that had cropped up in the self financing college sector. The government yielded to the exorbitant demands made by managements because they had conducted the discussions without doing any homework. Chandy said it was because of the realisation that they had been allowed huge increase in the fee, the managements agreed for granting certain concessions. However, the adamant attitude of the chief minister had deprived the students of the additional benefits they would have got otherwise.
