Tahir Hussain
Bandipora, January 02: The free bicycling scheme launched by the Kashmir University in November last year under 'Go Green Initiative' seems to be a flop show as most of the bicycles provided and put at the disposal of students are in a bad shape, as dominant number of the bicycles can be seen lying defunct at university gates as a dead stock.
The free bicycling scheme was introduced in view of the vehicular ban order in the main campus of Kashmir University. The vehicular ban order came into effect from August last year as a part of Kashmir’s University 'Go Green Initiative' to keep the Kashmir University campus clean and free from pollution.
Kashmir University student’s alleged that the free bicycling scheme inside the campus has proven a flop show as the bicycles were not as good in quality as one would have expected. "From the first day we informed the authorities that the bicycles are not durable and are not working properly,” students alleged.
“We also informed them to maintain the cycles on daily basis, but no one paid a heed to our suggestions. we are now facing the same problem as we were facing earlier inside the university as the private vehicle entry has been banned already, we are left with no option again,” said a law student of 7th semester Ehtishaam Mir. "It seems a joke with the students, as the university has bought the poor quality bicycles, they should have taken into consideration the quality and quantity of bicycles before purchasing them,” said another student Shahid Iqbal of MERC department".
Chief Proctor Naseer Iqbal said that the free cycling scheme was started in December last year only on trail basis to identify the technicalities and the difficulties that may come out of this scheme. “Now we have identified these issues and in march this year the free bicycling scheme will be implemented in letter and spirit”.
Talking about the quality and quantity of bicycles, the chief proctor said that the bicycles were given to Kashmir University under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and hence they were not aware about their quality and quantity. “Now the university is mulling to purchase own its bicycles from onwards“.
