Recently, running to use the washrooms of the Admin block and those of the New blocks have become an all too familiar practice for the students living in the hostels as all the hostels within the campus face an extreme water shortage. Initially, the situation was thought to be specific to only a few hostels but after enquiring around the campus, we realized that this problem was common to every hostel.
One of the students we talked to, stated “I shifted to hostel on 29th July. After 2-3 days, we started experiencing such issues. Most of us hostellers thought it was temporary, but found out the situation was much more serious when after 10 in the morning there was no water in almost the entire hostel. At first, we tried to solve the problem at a lower level by complaining to the caretaker and then to other hostel officials, but no solution was proposed or brought out to us.”
It has been almost a month since the students have moved into their respective hostels, and the situation has been getting consistently worse. This is how the past week’s scenario was described by one resident: “Water was available only in the early morning and had a 50-60 percent chance of availability in the evening. This went on for a week. Having no other option left, my friends and I went to the maintenance complaint division where we were assured that the problem will be analysed right at the moment. The next day (August 14), a faulty pipe was repaired, bringing some relief to us. However, even after a couple of days, no water was available in the morning and little to none in the evening.”
Similar stories have been narrated by most of the hostellers. The situation was not just limited to the boys’ hostels, as the residents of the girls’ hostels faced the same plight as well. “The shortage is so severe that the clothes sent for a wash on Thursday morning at 7, couldn’t be put out for drying until Friday night. Due to the irregular water supply the machine stopped halfway, leaving the clothes unclean and full of detergent which is how they stayed for an entire day and went again in the next morning”.
The situation continued to deteriorate as the water supply became erratic. “There were instances where we heard people running out of water while bathing or while they were inside the washroom. The water goes away all of a sudden without any warning. I was in the middle of my bath when the water ran out, causing great inconvenience.”
The students have since called on to the supervisors and have tried contacting the hostel warden, Mr. Kunwar Singh, but the authorities maintain that they can’t do anything about it as the issue is with the internal piping. The hostel warden also stated that there was a shortage of water supply from the Delhi Jal Board. Thankfully, drinking water has been readily available at all times. The students of BH-2 staged a protest on Friday night to make the authorities aware of the problems being faced by them.
The issue remains to be unresolved and no definitive timeline has been given as to when it will be settled. We fully commiserate with the students in this difficult situation and hope that soon there will be relief for them.