Vishakapatnam, July 22: In a rare protest, around 2,000 inmates of Andhra University’s girls hostel staged a dharna in front of the hostel at 9 pm. They were protesting poor facilities including poor quality food provided at the hostel.
In a pre-planned move, as soon as it was time for dinner, the inamtes came out of their rooms, boycotted the dinner and sat on a dharna in front of the hostel. The sudden action of the girls at so late night startled the university authorities.
The students alleged that they were paying Rs 18,000 per year toward hostel charges, but the management was not providing even healthy food. They demanded Vice Chancellor B Satyanarayana and Registrar Prasada Reddy to come to the spot to address their problems.
However, both officials could not be contacted over telephone as the university officials said they were out of station.
The hostel’s Chief Warden Ratnamala had a tough time convincing the media about the facilities at the hostel. Denying the students’ allegations, she said, “The food and other facilities were good. As chief cook of the hostel did not turn up for duty tonight, only one item on the dinner menu was not upto the mark”.
Higher Education Minister D Sridhar Babu told the mediapersons in Hyderabad that he would look into the problems of agitating girl students tomorrow. “I am also trying to contact Vice Chancellor and Registrar. The Government will take a serious note of the issue. As it is already midnight, I am requesting the girl students through the media to withdraw the agitation,” Sridhar Babu said.
Surprisingly, no university or hostel official turned up at the dharna site to pacify the agitating students till late in the night.
The girls told the media that the tiffin, meals and even the milk were not worth consuming. “We are taking meals with pickles brought from our homes.
There is no water also. Several times we have informed the Vice Chancellor but he is not taking any action”.
After midnight, Registrar Prasada Reddy rushed to the spot on the direction of Minister Sridhar Babu and held discussion with the students.
He assured them their problems would be settled tomorrow morning.
However, the agitating students were not satisfied with the argument and assurance of the Registrar and were continuing the dharna till the report was filed.
–Agencies