The Director of General Services at Qatar University, Khaled Al Jabor, has said that Qatar University, since the beginning of crisis, has taken many precautionary steps to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. 

“One of these measures is that we have stopped temporarily the work of many staff, including cleaning, hospitality, logistics and warehouse staff,” Al Jabor said.

 In a video published at the University website, Al Jabor shed light on the efforts of the Department of Facilities and Public Services to counter the spread of coronavirus, noting that: “As the university cannot go without cleaning, the respective cleaning workers were instructed to work evening shifts with just a limited number of workers.”

Giving more details about the precautions taken by the University, he said that student buses were fully sanitised from the very beginning of the crisis to avoid any problems.

Also around 200 steriliser devices were installed in the university in addition to the older ones. Al Jabor further said: “The precautions also include distance learning, which is one of the most important measures that the university resorted to and the university also reduced the number of employees at the university to 20 percent in implementation of decisions taken by the state.”

 The University also cancelled all events, and activities and sport courts and swimming pools were shut down, said Al Jabor.

Moreover, he said, a specialised company was hired to sanitise university indoors/outdoors buildings and facilities. “Currently the company is sanitising two buildings to test the effectiveness of the sanitising materials. In the future, this process will cover all other university buildings,” he said.

Recently, the university has announced that the academic position of students shall not be changed at the end of Spring 2020 semester except in the case of improvement.

The university fully understands students’ concerns related to the distance learning, and it is working hard to study and evaluate various options and their applicability that will be announced upon completion.  The university also said that the academic position of the student will not be affected if student’s GPA goes down. Student are allowed to repeat the courses, which he/she completed during Spring 2020 semesters, without taking his/her grade into account, the university announced last week.

SOURCE: THEPENINSULAQATAR