Boundary walls and fences at the Colombo University

The University of Colombo was considered to be the country’s metropolitan university when it was made a separate university in accordance with the provisions of the section 139(1) Universities Act No. 16 of 1978 with the name and style indicated therein: University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Though it was considered to be the country’s metropolitan university, there were many shortcomings in terms of buildings and other facilities such as equipment for sports, hostels especially for women undergraduates etc. The most striking of these were the barbed wire fences all over the university boundaries. These were indeed an eyesore.

After taking over the reins as Registrar in 1984, I began to gradually attend to shortcomings. Of course, the programme with regard to buildings had been planned by Prof. Stanley Wijesundera in 1980. When I took over, the buildings were still under construction. After supervising this work, I had to take some punitive action against the consultants and contractors for not doing the work according to specifications. I will indicate the details later in another article.

Getting back to the boundary walls and fences, the first wall that I was instrumental in getting built was the boundary wall round the Faculty of Medicine. There was a boundary wall only in front of the main building abutting Kinsey Road. The rest of the boundary was a barbed wire fence.

A lot of university property used to be surreptitiously passed over the fence to the other side – Maradana Road. I therefore got a boundary wall constructed replacing the barbed wire fence. Steps were also taken to extend the front wall onto the sides of the clock tower thereby closing an area within the Medical Faculty commonly used by patients and visitors to the National Hospital to ease themselves.

I thought all was well but there was no wall separating the Anatomy block from the JMO’s office and Medico Legal Morgue. This led to the encroachment of the Faculty of Medicine land by the JMO by getting a building to house a transformer built on University land. There was no alternative to constructing a boundary wall to prevent any further encroachment. Strangely nobody at the Medical Faculty had discovered this unauthorized construction until I detected it.

The biggest boundary demarcation that I needed to get done was replacing the barbed wire fence round the University playground on Thurstan Road and Reid Avenue extending along Prof. Stanley Wijesundera Mawatha to the Bauddhaloka Mawatha junction. This job was done in three stages because of then financial constraints at a total cost was Rs. 350,000/-. The present steel fence looks much better than the earlier barbed wire fence. This work would cost around Rs. 3.0 million or more at today’s prices.

The boundary demarcating the university premise from the Bauddhaloka Mawatha near the Faculty of Education building was also a barbed wire fence. I got a boundary wall with a gate constructed with access to Bauddhaloka Mawatha.

There was no boundary demarcating university land in the Buller’s Lane women’s hostel premises. When I inspected the place there was a footpath going across the land from Buller’s Lane to the area near the CR& FC grounds. This was possible because there was no boundary wall or fence demarcating the university property. If this continued a few more years, people would have encroached on that land and the University of Colombo would have lost it as nobody seemed to have been interested in securing the land for the university.

I got the land surveyed and got a boundary wall built ensuring the land belonging to the university was secured. If this had not been done there would not have been a Sujata Jayawardena Hostel for the University of Colombo.

The University of Colombo had quarters for academic and senior administrative staff at Harischandra Mawatha, Pamankada. This consisted of an upstair building with eight flats. Behind the flats was a large empty space. When I inspected the place, there was a man who had encroached on this land and grown a few king coconut trees, a jak tree and a mango tree, all of which were at their initial stages of growth. He also had a pile of bricks there, most probably with an idea of building something for himself.

I told him that I was getting this area surveyed and asked him to take away his belongings within three days. When I went with the surveyor on the fourth day, he had removed his property leaving the trees he had planted. After the land was surveyed, I got the Works Engineer of the university to get a boundary wall constructed. This was done in double quick time and the land was saved for the university.

Here too, though the quarters were occupied by university staff, nobody had noticed or cared about the encroachment until I went there and found what was happening.

The last boundary wall that I got constructed was the one demarcating the former court premises from the Faculty of Law. This has an interesting story behind it. As all these lands had been allocated to the University of Colombo, I thought of acquiring the court premises’ land also for the university. But just before they moving the courts from these premises, the Registrar of the Court informed me (as I had asked him to do earlier) that they were leaving.

However, the Special Task Force (STF) was also eyeing the premises. I knew that the university would not get it. As such, I instructed the Works Engineer to construct a boundary wall along the existing barbed wire fence. As soon as the excavation commenced, the then President of the Student Union (presently a State Minister) sent a letter to the Vice-Chancellor stating that the university land cannot be divided and if this was not stopped stern action would be taken.

The Vice-Chancellor asked me as to what was happening. I told him that though I had hoped the university would get the land it did not seem possible; so to save whatever land the university held, I was getting the boundary wall built. He directed me to stop the work and this was done. The then Defence Secretary, General Ranatunga, also came there with STF personnel carrying rifles. They demarcated the land taking a large extent from the university land.

The boundary wall was then built in accordance with that demarcation. Thereby the university lost a large extent of land which would not have happened if the wall was constructed as I had planned earlier.

HM NISSANAKA WARAKAULLE