The University of Hyderabad (UoH) Student Union is calling for a protest tomorrow, Wednesday, July 18, in front of the chief warden’s office over hostel accommodation mismanagement.
Over time, several issues have arisen, including poorly maintained hostel rooms, unhygienic mess facilities, low-quality food, a lack of drinking water, and neglected washrooms, among others. Additionally, students have reported being threatened with legal or police action when they attempted to voice their complaints.
According to the students, multiple times, they have brought issues related to the basic facilities to the notice of relevant authorities. However, to their surprise, they have been charged with fines or issued show cause notice for questioning.
Allegedly, a few students are compelled to visit another hostel or mess to access drinking water. Further, issues like the unclean hostel floors, substandard renovation and doors which look like they're about to collapse have also come to the fore.
Instances of finding snails in the mess food, insects in the curry, and frogs living inside the water cooler have become a common occurrence at a few hostels. It has been reported that the corridors in Ladies Hostels 1 and 2, along with other hostels, are prone to flooding during rain, with water even entering the living rooms in some places.
Apart from the above problems, there are additional issues of accommodations. As learnt from the students, a few of them were allegedly fined amounts ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 for staying in hostels during summer vacation without paying the required amount for summer accommodation.
The university sent an email notification stating that an additional Rs 1,000 will be charged for unreserved students, Rs 750 for OBC students, and no fees for ST/SC students who wish to stay back during the vacation, informed the students.
The students stayed back to complete their mandatory summer internships or prepare for the University Grant Commission - National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) exam which was cancelled on July 19, one day after the test day.
Issue of PhD scholars
Additionally, the PhD scholars who joined in the year 2018 and are about to complete their theses, have been asked to vacate the rooms. However, they allege that COVID-19 disruption is a major reason for the delay in their thesis submission.
“The Chief Warden is harassing and forcefully removing our research scholars who want to peacefully complete their thesis and leave. This unfair treatment of our scholars must be addressed and we will fight for it. The Chief Warden should be held accountable for this. I call upon all the student communities to come forward and resist this unfair treatment,” said Ateeq Ahmed, President of the UoH Student Union.
Furthermore, students with backlogs or those seeking recourse in the university are not allowed to stay in the hostels. They have been threatened with legal action if found on the hostel premises.
These issues not only pertain to the existing students, in some cases, the newly admitted students who joined last week have withdrawn from the courses or are allegedly planning to stay outside citing the unhygienic hostel and subpar quality food, the students informed.
Show causes notices?
In a surprising move, the authority did not hesitate to issue a show cause notice to a newly admitted student who complained about why he was allotted a different hostel when all his classmates were placed together.
Speaking on this, Kripa Maria George, a student claimed, “From the first day itself, the authorities are continuously discouraging the students from raising any sort of issue on the campus, so that they can do whatever they want and not focus on the issues of the students.”
“The university and the chief warden are fining and issuing show cause notices to silence the dissenting voices and students who are questioning the lapses in their system instead of working on it to improve the situation,” she further added.
Some allegations also state that the university is seeking fees from students who have Telangana ePass scholarships for semester registration. TS ePass provides financial assistance to economically disadvantaged students, enabling them to pursue higher education without financial constraints.
“The Telangana government has not yet disbursed the fellowship amount and these students are on the verge of dropping out because of this,” claimed Kripa.
The students' demands include the resignation of the chief warden, providing a hostel extension to the 2018 PhD batch, revoking fines on students for a summer stay, resolving hostel infrastructure issues, resolving mess issues, constructing new hostels, scraping fine culture, and conducting hostel elections among others.
