Students thrown out of QAU hostels

The Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) administration, with the help of police, dislodged hundreds of students including females from various hostels and closed down the campus for two weeks.

The move comes after two student groups clashed on the campus two days back, which left several students injured.

The QAU administration also cancelled the allotment of rooms and formed a 21-member committee to review the criteria for the re-allocation of rooms to the students.

The committee will also take into consideration how a peaceful teaching environment could be created on the campus. The committee will present its recommendations in a week.

Sources said that the police evicted all students including girls residing in hostels along with their belongings.

The sources said that hostel residents especially the girls, most of them hail from various provinces, requested the QAU administration and the police to let them stay in hostels since they had no place to go, but their requests were turned down and their belongings were thrown out on the streets.

A female student of the master’s programme requesting anonymity said that it was beyond comprehension for the management to cancel the allotment of rooms to the students. “The students who hail from far away areas are wandering in Islamabad like lunatic people and in a state of a quandary but without finding a place to stay. This is callous and we are dying,” she said adding that the university administration has badly failed in the upkeep of the campus and hostels which have turned into a ghost house.

She alleged that the students were provided with unhygienic food despite charging a hefty amount from the students.

According to QAU Registrar Raja Qaiser, it will take at least two weeks to resume classes at the university. He said that all allotments of rooms in hostels have been cancelled and new allotments will be made on the recommendations of the committee.

He said that the university administration held a meeting with the Islamabad police chief who assured them that the police will be posted at the university in the future. He said that no decision has been taken to build a permanent police post on the campus, and police will patrol within the campus so that no untoward incident occurs again.

The QAU registrar said that a letter has been sent to the interior ministry regarding the deployment of Rangers in the university, but they have got no response.

He said that during the closure of the university, hostels will be renovated and missing facilities will be provided.

Earlier, in a notification, the university administration announced to shut the university for an indefinite period. According to the notification, the university administration has directed the students to vacate hostels including boys and girls on an immediate basis.

“In the backdrop of a precarious law-and-order situation amid violent clashes between the student groups, the QAU is closed till further orders. All residents of the hostels (boys and girls) are hereby directed to vacate the hostels immediately,” said the notification.

An administration official claimed that the violent groups were led by expelled students of the university who had been indicted in various FIRs for creating the law-and-order and resorting to violence.

The official claimed that the university disciplinary committee took some decisions against them and as a result, they try to instigate the students to create disorder on the campus by staging strikes against the administration.

Sources said that the university administration has failed to put in place stringent measures to stop the recurrence of such incidents on campus.

A case has also been registered against miscreants at the request of the university administration.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2023.