The new girls’ hostel at the MGM College. Picture by Uma Shankar Dubey

Jamshedpur, June 16: Aspiring lady doctors at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College are in trouble. Space crunch and an “unutilised” facility is making life difficult for freshers seeking accommodation in the lone girls’ hostel of MGM College.

The girls have to put up in the staff quarters as the existing hostel is overcrowded. More than hundred boarders have to share 38 rooms in the hostel. Besides, its condition is far from satisfactory as the boarders have to cope with electricity, food and water problems.

“Most of the new girls seeking hostel accommodation have to put up in the staff quarters. Nearly a dozen freshers stay in two rooms of the staff quarters. Though they face certain problems, there is hardly anything that they can do,” students said.

Boarders at the staff quarters have to walk to the main hostel mess to have their meals. “It becomes a problem especially during examination. We have to take out time for lunch and dinner from our tight schedule. There are times when we skip meals. On other occasions, we have to rely on the mess staff to ferry food to our block,” they added.

The dilapidated condition of the staff quarters and the hostel makes it difficult for boarders to concentrate on their studies. “It gets too crowded at times. But we do not have an alternative,” the boarders said.

Though the new 42-bed hostel for the institution’s girl students was completed about six months ago, the college was yet to use the same. “The PWD authorities are not giving us the building for reasons best known to them. We have sent several reminders to the state health ministry for intervention. But nothing positive has happened so far,” said M.N. Prasad, a college official.

Health secretary P.P. Sharma said the ministry has received an SOS from MGM College seeking its intervention in the hostel impasse. “We have taken up the matter with the department,” he said, adding that the matter would be resolved soon.

The freshers manage to move to the girls’ hostel only after the seniors move to the interns’ hostel near the hospital. “We have been requesting the college officials to make arrangements quickly so that we can use the new building. It will be a great relief if we can use the new building,” the students said.

Though food is easily available to the girls in the main hostel, it is not always palatable. “The food is not of high quality. The mess is gloomy and we just don’t feel like eating there, so most of the time we fetch food to our room. It is just for breakfast when all of us are in a maddening rush that we sit and eat in the mess hall,” a student said.