Protests Erupt Over Poor Quality Food at IIIT Nuzvid, Authorities Take Action

Vijayawada: A section of third-year engineering students at IIIT Nuzvid in Eluru district staged a protest on Saturday during lunch time, complaining about poor quality food at the mess.

The institution has four campuses with nearly 26,000 students, and each campus has about 6,600 students having food in hostel messes on campus. The authorities finalised the tenders for caterers and they started supplying food to the students on October 1.

On Saturday afternoon, students from one of the messes complained about poor quality food supply and staged a protest, demanding that quality food be served.
Director G.V.R. Srinivas rushed to the students and enquired about the trouble.

After learning about the supply of poor quality food, he instructed the caterer concerned to ensure the supply of quality food to the students and even exhorted him to initiate action as per agreement norms if the quality of food failed to improve immediately.

Later, the authorities came up with a series of steps to address the issue. They will form a mess committee with students and faculty members for a month to monitor the quality of food. The committee will generate a daily report on the quality of food supplied and there will also be a weekly review of the reports with the top officials.

"A section of third-year engineering students from one of the messes complained about serving poor quality food during lunch time and staged a protest for some time. We immediately addressed the issue and assured them that good quality food would be supplied. We have also initiated a series of steps to continue the same practice to avoid repetition of such trouble," said Srinivas.

The students were convinced by the director's assurance and gave up their protest. They attended classes in the afternoon.