HCU students protest worms in food

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.