The Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Management & Technology (GIMT) Guwahati, located at Azara, will be turned into a 1,000-bed COVID19 Care Centre soon.

This was announced by Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in a tweet on Thursday.

Health minister Sarma on Thursday visited GIMT Guwahati, run by the Shrimanta Shankar Academy Society, to review the ongoing operations to make the new COVID19 Care Centre functional.

“Pleased to share that Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Management & Technology at Azara will soon serve as #COVID19 Care Centre, with a capacity of at least 1000-beds. Helps us a great deal. Visited the facility today to review the ongoing preparations,” Sarma tweeted.

Shrimanta Shankar Academy Society (SSAS) secretary Bijoyananda Chowdhury has welcomed the decision of the state’s health department to accept their proposal to use GIMT Guwahati as a COVID19 Care Centre.

Chowdhury informed that they approached the principal secretary to the state health department with the proposal when the COVID19 pandemic started to affect the state.

GIMT Guwahati campus was founded on September 7, 2006 as the first non-governmental engineering institute in Assam under the patronage of Shrimanta Shankar Academy Society.

Chowdhury told Northeast Now on Thursday, “When we established GIMT, the first private engineering college in Assam to cater to the higher education needs of the students of our state and the Northeastern region.”

The Shrimanta Shankar Academy Society was established with a mission and a vision to serve the Assamese people, he said.

Now, in this pandemic situation, the GIMT and SSA fraternity is “honoured and happy” to serve the people of Assam and to cater to their needs, the Society secretary further said.

“It’s a crisis that we should try to overcome in a collectively manner and we are glad to be a part of this process,” Chowdhury said.

He requested the other institutes in the private sector as well as the government sector to “come forward” to offer their services like GIMT.

The GIMT Tezpur is already serving as a COVID Care Centre.

“Now, with GIMT Guwahati being converted to a 1000-bed centre for the COVID patients, the Shrimanta Shankar Academy Society assures that it will always be there for the people of Assam,” Chowdhury added.