NAB asked to vacate girls` hostel | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

NAB asked to vacate girls` hostel

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday directed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to immediately vacate a girls` hostel of Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC).

The bureau has been provided accommodation in the offices vacated by the devolved Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education in Islamabad, according to a statement issued by the Prime Minister House. The prime minister has directed the secretary Cabinet Division for implementing his orders on priority.

The bureau occupied the girls` hostel in 1999 to establish its offices and four accountability courts in Rawalpindi.

In the last 11 years, the RMC administration had repeatedly requested the Punjab governments to get the hostel vacated from the bureau, but their pleas were ignored.

After the Young Doctors Association (YDA) staged a protest on January 29 this year outside the NAB office in Rawalpindi, they were given assurance that the hostel would be vacated. But it was not vacated.

At present 205 rooms of the existing RMC hostel accommodate 487 students. Moreover, 34 students have been accommodated in the empty houses reserved for professors of RMC and 12 are living in servant quarters. And ten students are living in the college`s study room, which has been converted into cabins.

YDA Punjab Chairman Dr Mohammad Haroon thanked the prime minister for directing NAB to vacate the hostel immediately. “Finding accommodation had become a headache for female students, but NAB officials were least bothered.”

He said the association had planned to launch a protest for getting the hostel back.

Source: Dawn

Date:4/19/2011