Hyderabad: The quality of food at the University of Hyderabad continues to deteriorate despite complaints. On Monday, students found cockroaches and small insects in the food served to them.
Over 60 students staged a hunger strike at the South Campus hostel shouting slogans deman-ding decent food. In February this year, a dead rat was found floating in the lunch served at the hostel.
Despite many such incidents being reported in the past, no action has been being taken so far. The students complained of poor quality and quantity of food on the campus.
“Several protests and written complaints to bring this to the notice of the administration have been in vain,” said Bipin Sebastian, a student from HCU said. The South Campus hostel mess, or the J, K, L Hostel mess has about 1,200 students. Whereas the other messes have a strength of about 200-300. Students pay about '2,500 per month as part of mess fee separately for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“We get either two dosas or four puris or lemon rice, which is inedible. Lunch is rice, curry, sambar and curd, which is repeated for dinner. The quality of the food is very bad and there are small worms and insects in it, which forces many students to eat outside. While it costs '60 per day in the mess, it costs about '120 only for lunch when we eat outside,” said Abin George, another student.
Students took out a signature campaign and de-manded a unified common mess for all hostels, a strong monitoring body for the entire hostel’s mess, a monitoring body comprising Dean of Social Welfare, chief warden, student’s union president and representatives of all the hostels. They also demanded a grievance redressal mechanism.
"Currently, the VC is not here and the chief warden and assistant chief warden washed their hands off saying that it was up to the mess secretary. Students suffer from diarrhoea or nausea regularly. Though mess char-ges are increasing, the food seems to be getting worse," said a student.
