Thiruvananthapuram: The woes at IISER-Thiruvananthapuram Vithura campus, which started with buildings being flooded during last week's rains, continued this week. Some of the lab spaces are still leaking, according to sources here. The leaking walls and roofs pose danger to instruments worth crores which have already been installed, they say. Moreover, the shifting of instruments from College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, is getting stalled because of the structural issues. CET is the transit campus from where IISER Thiruvananthapuram has been functioning since its inception.
It has been only a little over a year since IISER-Thiruvananthapuram started functioning in its permanent campus. Every building which is reportedly leaking, including the Central Instrumentation Facility, is new. Within the CIF are high-end instruments like X-Ray Diffractometre which costs over Rs 3 crores. Some of the labs at this common facility are yet to be set up. Even insulation work has not been completed. The delay is costing researchers their precious time.
Last week, the ground-floor labs which had Cryo XRD, IR spectrometer, UV-Vis spectrometer, glove boxes and Cryo measurement system around Rs 40 crore were flooded. Sources say there has been some issue with the drainage system.
IISER-Thiruvananth-apuram authorities - its director and registrar - did not answer to DC's calls nor reply to an SMS query on what measures are being taken to correct the structural issues. Currently the works on the permanent campus are being carried out by Central Public Works Department, after a contractor, who was originally awarded the work, left it midway. The works were estimated to cost '900 crores.
