The hostels in the University of Colombo – my involvement

By Hm Nissanka Warakaulle

When I became Registrar of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1984, having earlier served as Senior Asst. Registrar for three years, there were four hostels for the undergraduates. The men’s hostels were the Havelock Road Hostel (which was earlier the Catholic hostel run by the Catholic Church) and the Bloemfontein Hostel for Medical students. The women’s hostels were the De Saram hostel and women’s hostel for medical students. Though there was a big demand for hostel accommodation which was increasing by the year, the university was not in a position to give accommodation to all. The Treasury did not release any funds to construct new hostels.

Justice Mark Fernando, a member of the Council (and a batch mate of mine at Peradeniya) used to mention at meetings of the Council in 1980 that there was a large extent of land on Ananda Rajakaruna Mawatha belonging to the Catholic Church with an old building used by undergraduates as well as employed graduates as a hostel known as Kityagara, which the Church wanted to dispose of at Rs. 2.0 million. The university authorities at that time did not show any interest in acquiring this land. When I took over the reins as Registrar in 1984, I paid a visit to the church and inquired as to whether the land was available. It was and at the same price of Rs. 2.0 million! I got the wheels moving and got the land acquired for the university at Rs. 2.0 million.

As the university needed the land to demolish the existing building and to construct a storeyed building for a hostel, I went with the Senior Assistant Registrar in charge of Student Welfare and met the occupants in the building and gave them an ultimatum to vacate the premises. I got a notice prepared and pasted it at a few places to indicate the ultimatum. We had called for tenders to demolish the existing building and remove the debris. When the contractor came to attend to this, he found that all the valuable fretwork panels atop the doors and windows had been removed. I knew that the son of a police officer too was involved in this pilferage.

I telephoned the OIC of the Borella Police Station and told him that if all the items were not returned in three days, we would file action against the culprits. The following morning all the items were back in the premises! The university received Rs. 150,000/- for demolishing and removing all debris, whereas under normal conditions the university would have had to pay the contractor to demolish the building and removing the debris. Now the bare land was ready for the construction of the hostel building.

I had earmarked land within the university premises to construct a new storeyed building in front of the Havelock Road Hostel in the open land available in the Bloemfontein hostel, and to demolish the two storeyed hostel on De Saram Road and in its place to construct a four- storeyed building.

Before I get on to the new buildings, I should mention how the Army wanted to take over the Havelock Road hostel temporarily to accommodate their soldiers. On two occasions, a Major came to meet me in my office and requested the use of the Havelock Road hostel to accommodate soldiers for a short period. I knew what had happened to the Brodie Hostel on Bauddhaloka Mawatha which too had been taken temporarily to accommodate soldiers who had come from distant places. The Army never gave it back to the university.

They wanted to take over the Havelock Road hostel as the male undergraduates occupying the hostel were behind all protests, picketing and other demonstrations. All these were planned in that hostel and the drawing of posters too. I managed to dissuade the Major by stating that it was the only hostel for men undergraduates and there will be a riot if that was taken over.

I recommended to the Vice-Chancellor (VC), Prof. Stanley Wijesundera, that we switch the two hostels for men and women or else the Army would surely take it over. He agreed. We got the women undergraduates of the De Saram hostel to move into the Havelock Road hostel, and the men to move into the De Saram Hostel. That solved the problem as far as the Army was concerned. But the male undergraduates protested that they had been deprived of hostel facilities as the De Saram hostel was smaller than the Havelock Road hostel. They forcibly occupied the gymnasium as they had no other place to go to.

We met with the VC and agreed to ignore this as we expected that by nightfall the students would be scared of the action that the police would take and they would leave. As envisaged when we went in the morning the students had vacated the premises after throwing away the key.

As I had mentioned earlier in another article, I had to get the old Havelock Road hostel repaired and renovated after the bomb blast that killed Minister Ranjan Wijeratne, with the help of NORAD (for the funding) and the Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB) with an engineer of CECB, Mr. Upasena getting a wonderful job done.

I had planned to construct four or five storeyed buildings in the Kittyagara land in Rajakaruna Mawatha and Havelock Road in front of the old building. However, before I could embark on it, I had to go on my sabbatical leave. When I returned from leave and resumed duties, I found that a small building of two floors had been constructed in the Kittyagara land. On Havelock Road the consultants had planned a four storeyed building. I checked with the consultants as to whether the building could have an additional floor as this was prime land and we could give accommodation to more women undergraduates. He said it could be done and it was done. And now there is a five storeyed building giving shelter to more deserving women undergraduates.

With regard to the Kittyagara building I could not do anything. But as there was land available, I got a four storeyed building constructed utilizing the vacant land. As there were no hostel facilities available for Buddhist monks, I got a section of the Kittyagara hostel separated and made into a hostel for the monks. But unfortunately, sometime later some of the other hostelers had blocked all the toilets with concrete so that the monks had to vacate the premises.

As a result of the lack of hostel facilities for men, the Student Union had decided to take a daring move to secure a building that was within the land that was promised to be given to the University of Colombo. The Union had planned to get into the building one day when it was dark and when only one or two security guards would be there. The university had been planning to get these buildings whre the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) was accomodated.

Though the University of Colombo and the CDC came under the Ministry of Education, the Ministry Secretary did not agree to part with the buildings. One day, just before closing time, the Assistant Registrar in charge of Student Welfare came into my office and told me of a daring plan for the students to take over the building. I told him not to tell anybody else and left it at that. The following morning when we came to office the students had completed the siege and occupied the building (at that time housing the Ministry of Cultural Affairs). I do not want to go into details of what happened after that and only mention that the university got the building which we had been trying to get from 1980! This siege was an interesting episode for a separate article later. However, these buildings were not used as hostels, but utilized to house the newly established Faculty of Finance and Management Studies.

Now to solve the problem of hostel accommodation, the Minister of Higher Education, Mr. Richard Pathirana, was very helpful. There were three buildings that the Government was prepared to hand over to the university. Along with the Minister and the VC, a team went round on an inspection tour of the buildings. The Grandstand of the Race course was too far gone. A building used by the then Ministry of Science and Technology in Muttiah Road, Slave Island and another building in Thelawala, Moratuwa were selected. But extensive repairs and renovations had to be done to bring them up to a standard to be habitable for the undergraduates.

Repairing and renovating these buildings was undertaken by the Buildings Department. I had to visit these sites along with the Works Engineer to monitor the progress and see that the work was completed soon. This was done and the women undergraduates were sent to the Muttiah Road hostel and males were accommodated in the Thelawala hostel.

I had to undertake the completion of the Sujata Jayawardena hostel as the Colombo University Alumni Association had exhausted all funds available for this project and there was a balance work of about Rs. 3.5 million left to complete the building. Mrs. Jayawardena and a few members had gone and met Mr. Anura Bandaranaike, who was in charge of Higher Education at that time and apprised him of the situation. Mrs. Jayawardena came after the meeting and told me that the Minister had agreed to release the funds. I inquired whether he gave it in writing. She answered in the negative. I told her that the money will not come.

And so it happened. Later I too accompanied the team to meet Prof. Viswa Warnapala, who was the Minister of Higher Education and was one year junior to me at Peradeniya. He agreed to get the funds and immediately dictated a letter to be dispatched for the purpose. The Alumni Association wanted me to undertake the work and complete the building, which I did. With the assistance of Mrs. Elizabeth Ure, wife of the Chairman of Reckitt and Coleman, I was able to get some additional work done to make the hostel more presentable.

In respect of hostels, the last hostel was the one built by the People’s Bank. Mr. Rasheed Ali, the Chief Engineer of People’s Bank came and met me in my office one day and told me that his bank wanted to construct a hostel for 50 women undergraduates to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of the bank and to name the hostel as Vincent Subasinghe hostel in memory of the first Chairman of People’s Bank. Both of us went round the campus looking for a land for this purpose. We settled on a vacant land near the Medical Faculty women’s hostel. This building was constructed and declared open by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. I was the only person involved from the university in the construction of this building.

I had put up two papers to the Council to construct two hostels, namely, in the vacant area of the Bloemfontein Hostel and to demolish the existing two storeyed building of the De Saram hostel for men and construct a four storeyed building in its place. Though I could not get these two buildings constructed, it had been done after I relinquished office as Registrar. That ended my contribution to the construction of hostels in the University of Colombo.