Higher education: GCU to get Rs100m grant for new campus

370-acre campus for 60,000 students being developed at Kala Shah Kaku.

LAHORE:

Caretaker Chief Minister and Old Ravian Najam Sethi on Saturday laid the foundation stone for a new Government College University (GCU) Lahore campus at Kala Shah Kaku and announced a grant of Rs 100 million for initial infrastructure development.

The 370-acre campus, once complete, will allow the university to take on 60,000 new students, according to a press release from the GCU. “It’s a historic year. We are laying the foundation stone of the new campus in the 150th year of the establishment of the Government College Lahore,” said Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Khaleequr Rahman, briefing the chief minister.

The new campus will have 11 academic blocks, hostels, a library, laboratories, museum, mosque, watch towers, workshops, a medical centre, a cafeteria, an open-air theatre, an auditorium with a seating capacity of 3,500, a high school for employees’ children, a daycare centre, a shopping centre, and staff and faculty residences. It would also have facilities and grounds for cricket, football, tennis, badminton, hockey and swimming, he said.

The complete development of the campus will cost an estimated Rs4.79 billion, he said. But once phase one is complete, it will be opened for some 8,000 students.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2013.