Lockdown: Hyderabad Urdu varsity 'refuses' to look after 300 poor outstation students

By Our Representative
Nearly 300 students of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), Hyderabad, have been stranded for lack of funds to feed themselves during the current lockdown. Revealing this, Umar Faruq, president, MANUU Students’ Union, has said that the students, mostly belonging to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, live outside the MANUU campus because of lack of hostel rooms.
Faruq, in a letter to Firoz Bakht Ahmed, chancellor, MANUU, “As a majority of students live outside the university owing to the paucity of the rooms inside the campus hostels, they are unable to pay the rent since most of their parents are poor and are not earning owing to the lockdown.”
The letter, whose contents were made public by Ahmed, said, while the students’ union was trying its level best for providing food the students, there was no positive response from the in charge vice-chancellor Prof Ayub Khan, except that there are no funds and the nodal officer has refused any help.

Ahmed said, Faruq in his letter has requested transportation of these students, but Prof Khan has not responded. This is happening despite the fact that “all the universities are managing the transportation of the students on their own as this activity falls under the ambit of the university administration.”

Ayub Khan, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, Umar Faruq

“When the government is sending lakhs of migrant workers to their hometowns, why can’t this university send the poor students who have no earning resources? The spendthrift university can waste lakhs of rupees on the so-called, some 15-20 consultants who draw a salary of about one lakh rupees per month in addition to the free food and lodging and perks!”, the letter has been quoted as saying.
Comments Ahmed, agreeing with the spirit of the letter, “Most of these consultants have been living in the university as parasites. The ministry of human resource development should inquire into this matter asking for the accountability of these retired and superannuated consultants.”

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