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Medical students evicted from hostels struggle to survive
KARACHI, Jan 4, 2008: A large number foreign and local students who were
evicted from the Sindh and Dow medical college hostels after the closure of the
two facilities over three months ago following group clashes at the Jinnah
Postgraduate Medical Centre are struggling for survival as the administration
has not yet helped them hire accommodations.
While the administration has
started the process to use these hostels for different university programmes,
there are no immediate plans to provide any support to these students, most of
whom complain flat accommodations are increasingly expensive. The two hostels
had around 350 students.
"It's not that we lived in a home-like
environment there. The hostel conditions were filthy and we arranged all repairs
from our own pockets. But with the hostels' closure life has become even more
difficult for us. Most of the evicted students are now sharing congested flats
and bearing huge expenses on account of rent, food, utility bills and transport
charges," a student, speaking on behalf of a group, said on the condition
of anonymity.
Though the hostels were notorious for serving as safe
havens for criminals, these students contend the hostels were also home to many
deserving students who had come from far-flung areas, even from abroad, to study
at the institutions. "It was the negligence of the successive administrations
that spoiled the hostel environment. Why had the present administration kept
silent for so many years before taking the extreme step? The anti-social
elements could be rooted out through stern security measures," said another
student.
Initially, all of them had great difficulties in finding
suitable accommodations because of their being single and when they found ones
there were other problems in store for them. "I am sharing a two-room flat with
three boys in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. The total expenses, including fares, come to
around Rs9,000 per person per month and none of us is able to pay that much
without family support though we have started giving tuitions," a student
said.
With the hostels' closure, the economic woes of their families had
compounded, the students said, while questioning why the SMC's genuine students
were made to bear the brunt of the incident that involved criminal elements.
They also asserted that the administration had ordered them to vacate the hostel
on a day's notice. "The Rangers came into the SMC hostel on the pretext of
security, but the next day they asked us to move out," one of them
said.
DMC students were more critical on the issue as they maintained
that their eviction didn't make any sense as their hostel was situated far away
from the place of the violent incident and had nothing to do with it at all. "We
tried to approach the principal and the vice-chancellor many times, but they
denied us an audience and since the incident had occurred during exam days,
students preferred not to agitate the issue," another student said, adding that
the administration forced the DMC students to vacate the hostel a day before the
SMC hostel was vacated.
Students of both institutions allege that the
university administration had asked them to vacate the hostel about a year ago,
much before the JPMC violence, but couldn't carry out any operation because of
the strong resistance put up by students. "Finally, the administration used the
JPMC incident as an excuse to implement its plan," said a
student.
Outsiders in hostel
Though the DMC hostel
students were reluctant to admit that some anti-social elements lived in there,
SMC students admitted that there were more 'outsiders' than students in the
hostel. However, these students questioned the writ of the administration and
asked if the college officials were not responsible to rid the hostel premises
of such elements and, above all, why genuine students were made to pay for
others' sins.
"The environment of the SMC is heavily politicised and
students are forced to join one party or another on the very first day of their
joining the institution. The students are at the mercy of party activists. Most
of us give in to avoid trouble and the situation was no different in the hostel.
There was no administrative intervention whatsoever and one could find many
students, including foreign ones, who had been living in the hostel for more
than 15 years," a student said, adding that the seniors led the juniors in every
hostel matter.
Foreign students
About foreign students'
problems at the SMC hostel, a Nepalese student said the strategy for survival
they had adopted was to keep away from the hostel all day and use it only at
night. "The administration's continued negligence had made the hostel a safe
haven for criminals. Arms and drugs used to be kept and transported from the SMC
hostel in connivance with the watchman, and at night firing into the air had
become a norm on all occasions. The pitch darkness made their work easier as
there wasn't a single functioning tube-light in the hostel corridors or ground,"
he revealed, adding that street vendors were also terrorised by anti-social
elements residing in the hostel.
Most of the students and teachers we
talked to about the closure of the hostels appeared favouring the
administration's decision and maintained that the deployment of Rangers after
the hostels' closure had improved the college environment, especially that of
the SMC's. Some teachers also said there was no need for a boys' hostel since
quota seats had drastically decreased over the years.
The vice-chancellor
of the Dow University of Health Sciences, Dr Masood Hameed Khan, said both
hostels had been completely in the control of rogue elements who were not giving
a single penny to the administration but using all hostel facilities. "Despite
the administration's best efforts, the hostel environment didn't improve. Every
conceivable wrongdoing was taking place in these hostels and we had no choice
but to shut them after the JPMC's deadly incident," he said, adding that the
decision was taken at a higher official level.
About the provision of any
support to the evicted students, he said there were a handful of 'genuine
students' as many had already left the hostels due to the highly-politicised
environment and criminal activities. "The foreign students should have been
assisted by their embassies while the locals have well accommodated themselves
and are living in shared flats," he said.
Answering a question whether
the university had any plans to open a hostel in the future, he said though
there were no such immediate plan, the administration would set up a boys'
hostel in six months or so at the Ojha Institute. "The administration will
ensure strict adherence to the university rules in that hostel, where a student
will be admitted after his parents' signed an undertaking that the university
could rusticate him if he is found involved in any anti-social activities," he
said. Dawn
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