Military extends its hand in renovation work at Colombo University:

Maths Department gets a facelift after 179 years

By Ranil Wijayapala

When the Colombo city is getting greener and cleaner under the initiative of the Defence and Urban Development Ministry, city dwellers witnessed the way many buildings with architectural and historical value are being renovated and preserved maintaining their architectural and historical value. That process initiated by the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development could add more and more buildings with commercial value to the city making the city more and more beautiful and attractive one.

Dr Rohan P. Perera

Dr. Jagath Wijerathna

But the commercial value of the building is not the only criteria for the Defence and Urban Development Ministry to extend its cooperation for the preservation of such buildings. Unaware to many of us the helping hand of the military has also been extended towards the university system in the country to preserve their buildings that cater to the thousands of undergraduates to pursue their education.

The nearly 179-year-old Maths Department building, the oldest and iconic building of the Colombo university is now getting the finest touch of the military to expand its lifetime for another 100 to 200 years.

This has become the finest example for the cohabitation between the military and university system in the country where the university systems generally rejects any military involvement in their affairs.

According to Dr. Jagath Wijerathna, Head of the Maths Department of the University of Colombo, the building which cater to nearly 1000 undergraduates of the Science Faculty annually, was in need of urgent repairs for the past few years as the windows and doors of the building were in the verge of collapse as it had not undergone any substantial repair for more than 175 years.

However, all the endeavours within the university system to get it renovated failed as contractors were not willing to undertake the job as it required a lot of men and material and also demolish and removal debris from the site.

"As the Head of the Department and also as a former student of that department I really wanted to get this building repaired as the students had to participate in lectures under difficult circumstances. Since all those efforts failed we made a request from the Secretary of Defence through the Dean of the Faculty of Science and the Vice Chancellor of the University, requesting his assistance to renovate this building", Dr. Wijerathna said.

"What we wanted was to renovate this building also in the same way the Sri Lanka Army is renovating the racecourse building", he said.

According to Dr. Wijerathne, the Defence Secretary responded to the letter the following day itself and sent a team of Army personnel to inspect the building and then onwards the process of renovating the building started as a combined effort of the University of Colombo and the Sri Lanka with the active participation of the 6th Engineering Services Regiment.

The 6th Engineering Services Regiment under the command of Colonel P. Gunasekara was entrusted with the task of renovating building. "The supply of material required for the renovation has to be done by the university and the entire consultancy, planing, supervision and labour was handled by the Sri Lanka Army on the directive of Defence Secretary", Dr. Wijerathna said.

The Higher Education Ministry extended its support after releasing Rs.20 million to purchase the material required for the project. After preparation of plans and the construction works were started on January 2013 and since then the work carried out continuously without any relax except for two days holiday for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

Though the university machinery is very slow in the process of purchasing material as it has to go through several procedures, the Colombo university administration supported the project by fast tracking the process of purchasing necessary building material.

The cooperation of the students also came in handy for the project not only by not resisting to the project but also extending their support in the form of shramadana campaigns to remove the debris from the site and clean the environment.

"Initially we thought that the students will resist the project due to the military involvement of the the project. But they also realised they are doing a genuine job on behalf of them. Therefore they extended their support to the military to carry out the work", he said.

"We are getting a huge labour cost free to the project from the Army personnel having an immense reduction of project cost", he said.

"I have taken records about the people who worked at the site on each day and made a substantive report about the labour cost after taking to account the number of employees such as masons, plumbers, welders, etc worked at the site on each date. The estimates exceeds Rs.40 million without including any supervision or consultation cost. If we add five percent for consultancy and another five percent as supervision we are getting nearly Rs.50 million worth of contribution from the Ministry of Defence to this project as engineering and skill labour", he said.

"Now the entire project is nearing completion and we are planning to open the building in the month of February. Therefore I would like to thank the entire university community for extending their support for the project and Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa who initiated this project on our request", he said.

"What we admire is that they have done a complete job for us by completely renovating the building to ensuring another 100 to 150 years life time. Therefore our next challenge is to properly maintain this building ", he said.

To achieve this task the Mathematics Department has started a "Mathematics Building Preservation Fund" with the approval from the council.

"The whole objective of this fund is to maintain the building properly. I would like to tell the alumni of University of Colombo that this 179 old building has been preserved by the 6th Engineering Services Regiment of SL Army after working very high degree of commitment for more than one year. Therefore every cent of your generous donation will bring this monument of University of Colombo for many years to future generations", he said.

Therefore they can make their contributions to this fund by sending their money to AC No.086-1001-61189660 - Peoples Bank Thimbirigasyaya Branch in the name of Mathematics Building Preservation Fund - University of Colombo, using the swift code PSBKLKLXA023.

Army personnel at work

The front corridor after renovation

"All funds will be managed by the University of Colombo, Bursar's office for the purpose of maintenance and preservation of the Mathematics Building with in the University of Colombo financial regulation framework", he said.

Colonel P. Gunasekara, Commanding Officer of the 6th Engineering Service Regiment, said the requests of this nature to renovate old building regularly comes to them through the Ministry of Defence and through the Army Commander after they completed Defence Services School project at the request of Secretary to the Defence Ministry in 2006.

For this project also the six Engineering Service Regiment committed their well trained and disciplined personnel to fulfill the task properly.

"Throughout the project we have worked without any resistance from the university system and we had a very friendly environment to work there. Nobody has come to me and asked why have you come here. As a student of the university of Moratuwa I can remember how the students at that time hated the military personnel within the university premises. Now the university students have realised what the Government is doing for them ," he said.

A Chartered Civil Engineer cum military official Colonel Gunasekara said that many of the people are not aware that many military officers involved in these projects are well qualified personnel.

He said if tenders were called for the project it would have been a project of Rs.100 to 200 million. But the contractors would not undertake a job of this nature as it require lot of demolition and removal of debris from this 179 years old building.

"Now the building has been renovated preserving its historical value and also architectural value", he said.

Dr. Rohan P. Perera, Director of the Institute of Human Resource Advancement of the University of Colombo who helped conveying the request of the university to the Defence Secretary, said that through this project a very energetic message conveys to the society about friendship built between the military personnel and the university students.

This is the first building renovated in the university system by the direct involvement of the Ministry of Defence.

Everybody appreciate this now though some elements accused us of trying to create a conflict between the university students and the Army. But it never happened. Instead, the friendship between the military and the university community strengthened through this project. In the future we should develop this friendship further as students have realised that it was a human being who works behind those uniforms also", he said.