Hyderabad: Hostellers between devil and deep sea

Hyderabad: Students, IT professionals and other employees working in pharma, hospitality and retail, who belong to different states, including Andhra Pradesh are facing hardships to stay in Hyderabad as the hostel managements threatened to closure forcing them to look for other avenues. The managements said that the property owners of the hostel buildings increased rentals abnormally after the government clamped lockdown in Telangana to contain the spread of coronavirus.

In Ameerpet, Kukatpally, Jubilee Hills, Hitec City and Dilsukhnagar, the property owners expressed fears over spread of the virus if more number of people stayed together. The hostel managements were asked to vacate the premises immediately or pay huge rentals from April.

In some cases, the owners were visiting often to the hostels and raised questions on the cleanliness of the premises without any reason. The building owners imposed fresh restrictions asking the managements to reduce the strength of boarders by half as a precautionary measure.

In addition, the availability of essential commodities required to prepare food on a daily basis has gone down due lockdown in Hyderabad.

In some areas, traders were collecting double the prices, Kukatpally hostel management association leader V Prabhakar Rao said that he was paying Rs 1.2 lakh to the building owner as rent and the latter is demanding Rs 2 lakh from next month.The association explained the difficulties in running the hostels in the current crisis to Animal Husbandry Minister T Srinivas Yadav, who held a meeting after students in Hyderabad left for Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday, which created a political storm for the whole day. The Minister gave assurance to the association that there would be a status quo on hostel building rents and would make available essentials at reasonable prices to the hostels. However, the association was not sure the government will address all the issues raised by them. Students and employees said that the government stopped issuing NOCs (no objection certificates) to leave for their native place. The managements are closing the hostels citing they will incur losses. Unless the government comes to their rescue, they have no option but to close the hostels. Then hostellers will be shelterless.