Students concerned over closure of hostels

Islamabad : A group of female and male students approached the media outside the Supreme Court of Pakistan to seek help due to facing a trauma in case of closures of their hostels in the capital city.

The students have expressed a grave concern over the Capital Development Authority (CDA) sudden drive of closure of male and female hostels established since years and enforced the students to spend their lives under open sky. “Our Prime Minister is providing shelter to the homeless people and on the other hand the departments like CDA pushing us to get out of homes”, says a student. She stressed on government to take serious action against such operation of CDA.

She added that hundreds of students coming to Islamabad in every semester and universities have limited lodging capacity, in such a scenario students are compelled to avail accommodation in private hostels where they get proper food, security and other associate facilities and in case of actions against private hostels, they would be deprived of quality education.

A legal expert with the students’ delegation out the SCP says that in every civilised country students are being facilitated in terms of accommodation with exemption of taxes whereas CDA is marking students’ hostel as non-conforming use of property.

The students also shared that they prefer to avail accommodation near to the universities so they do not waste their precious time in travelling and investing more money and in case of closure of hostels in various sectors of Islamabad they would be in huge trouble. It would be security risk as well, they added. The students appealed from the government to stop the CDA for any such action and not disturb the students in high time of studies.