PBM ready to vacate H-9 college hostel after years

Islamabad : Having occupied it for around six years to lodge orphans, the Pakistan Baitul Mal, a semi-autonomous organisation funded by the federal government, has agreed to vacate the hostel of the Islamabad Model College for Boys, H-9.

However, the public sector educational institution will have to wait for around five months to get hold of the building ‘illegally’ used by the PBM as the Pakistan Sweet Homes orphanage since August 2012.

The hostel was earlier held by the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology on lease granted in 2001 on the orders of the then education minister, Zubaida Jalal.

According to officials in the know, the PBM secured the hostel’s control and deployed own guards all around shortly after the COMSATS institute agreed to vacate it in July 2012, to the disappointment of the newly-enrolled students from other parts of the country.

At that time, the college got a new principal, who was taken unawares without the chance to stop the building’s occupation. Though required by the law, the laid-down procedure wasn’t adhered to by the FDE, which oversees the college, for the exercise. The relevant directorate officials neither took the principal on board nor did they make any documentation.

As the top FDE post was vacant at that time due to litigation, a director of the directorate was pressured by his bosses at the Capital Administration and Development Division, which had the administrative control of the FDE, into signing a memorandum of understanding with the PBM about the handing over of that government building though the rules didn’t allow a BPS-19 official to do so.

Ironically, the memorandum didn’t carry the signature of anyone from the PBM. The hostel’s occupation frustrated the poor college students from Balochistan, Fata, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, who were entitled to lodging on the premises.

Though their college had the largest hostel in the city with the capacity to accommodate more than 200 people, the students were left with no option but to rent private hostels and thus, further stressing out their parents.

They held several protests to claim right to the hostel, insisting the building can’t be used for purposes other than educational under the law. After remaining indifferent to these students’ misery for a long time, the PBM has now agreed to relocate the H-9 Pakistan Sweet Homes orphanage.

“We’ll take away our children (orphans) from the H-9 college’s hostel after getting a shelter home in place for them by November,” PBM chairman Zamrud Khan told ‘The News’. He appealed to the people to donate money for the purpose.

Former Federal Government College Teachers Association President Professor Tahir Mahmood welcomed the development and said after the college got back its hostel, the students would get good, affordable living on one hand and concentrate more on learning on the other.

“Our students have suffered a lot due to the hostel’s occupation as they live in private hostels with atmosphere not congenial to educational activities in any way. Accommodation on campus provides the students with an atmosphere conducive for studies as they get help from each other in need. They can exchange notes and books and learn regularity and punctuality and how to lead a disciplined life,” he said.