Soon, 6 more hostels for youth to be built in districts

The state Youth Services and Sports department has set a target of making six more hostels for youth operational in the next three months.

The step has been taken to ensure that not a single student or a youth face inconvenience in getting better accommodation when they visit any district in the state with the purpose to study or pursue sports activities and others.

At present, there are 21 youth hostels in the state which are operational and the state government has taken up projects to set up more in the districts.

The decision to set up more hostels were taken up after the change of guard in the state following an assessment which revealed that many students do not get proper accommodation when they visit different places of interest in the state.

According to a senior official of the Youth Services and Sports department, it was decided in a recent meeting that at least six more hostels have to be made operational by the end of June.

Thus, the officials are planning to make hostels in places including Durgapur, Bishnupur, Mython and Nabadwip operational in the next three months.

"The civil work of the six hostels is almost complete. The work including electric wearing and furnishing is left. These works will be completed by the end of June," the official said.

He further said that with six more youth hostels becoming operational, there will be a total of 27 youth hostels in the state. The accommodation capacity of each of the six newly-built hostels is around 100. Thus, the total accommodation capacity will go up by 600.

Sources said that the decision to make at least six more youth hostels operational was taken in a recently-held monthly review meeting of the Youth Services and Sports department.

Though the hostels are mainly built to facilitate easy availability to students and youth, it would also help in boosting the state's tourism sector.

People visiting the places of interest could also book a room or so in a youth hostel.

One can go online for booking the rooms in youth hostels but one need to get permission of the concerned officials of the department in case he/she needs to book many rooms for a long period of time.

It may be recalled that the department has engaged a set of senior officers to visit all the districts for two days in a week to monitor the progress of different projects taken up by the department.

"Constant monitoring helped in timely completion of many projects and the target of making six hostels in the next three months would also be achieved," the official said.