Tanvir Ahmed Rasel, CoU Correspondent: Institutional E-mail facility has not been provided for the students of ComillaUniversity even after 15 years of its establishment.  As a result, the students complained that they are suffering from various difficulties in the field of research, scholarship, e-learning and many other activities. Meanwhile, the concerned departments say that they do not have any instructions in this regard.

Institutional e-mail or Edu-mail (Educational E-mail) is required for various tasks including reading online research articles from reputed journals, applying for scholarships, publishing research papers, receiving research grants etc. But so far the ComillaUniversity administration has not taken any action in this case.

Inconsequence, many students are losing interest in research. Moreover, interested students are lagging behind due to various complications. AM Nur Uddin Hossain, a student of the Department of Public Administration is currently working on a research project funded by UNDP. He said, `I did not get any suggestion or technical assistance from my institution. I have to work in this field on my own initiative. Even teachers are very indifferent to research.`

During the COVID-19 pandemic, CoU students can not participate in many necessary online courses easily like many other university students. Beside that, they are deprived of getting access on learning and developing software, G-suit education, unlimited google drive use and many other services.

MD Zahir Raihan, a student of the Department of Finance and Banking has had a bitter experience to apply on foreign universities and other educational activities. He said, `Due to not having institutional e-mail, I had to fall behind. My demand to the authorities will be that the Edu-mail be provided as soon as possible.`

 Concerning Edu-mail issue when contacted, the director of the Research and Extension Department of the university Mohammad Mizanur Rahman said, `There had been no discussion so far on the issue of giving institutional Emails to students. ICT Cell and IQAC work in this regard. If authority gives us this responsibility, We will do it.

On the other hand, there is no instruction to the Institutional Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC). The director of the cell, Prof. Biswajit Chandra Deb said, `It is not our job to give institutional E-mails. IQAC does not work with ICT. The CoU ICT Cell will work if we provide information or instructions. I will discuss the matter soon.`

The ICT cell of the university does not have instructions too. Cell`s programmer Mohammad Nasir Uddin said, `We don`t have any directions yet. We will start work if we get proper direction.`

On this matter, Comilla University Registrar Professor Dr. Md. Abu Taher said, "This is in our thoughts. We will talk about this in the next meeting. There will be a necessary committee in this regard. For the convenience of the students, work will be done to provide institutional e-mail soon.`

In the context of not working because there are no instructions or directions given to ICT Cell or others, he said, `Work is done only on the basis of instructions, not that. Related departments can also make proposals in this regard. The administration will consider it."