Rawalpindi, As National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has not vacated Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC) hostel building on Rawal Road, the college administration has converted nursing hostel at Holy Family Hospital (HFH) into girls’ hostel to accommodate incoming medical students.

New session of medical college started on Monday and the RMC had to complete the arrangement to accommodate the girls’ students. Thus year 74 boys and 224 girls had got admission in first year of medical college and the administration completed their documentation process last week. 

At present, more than 400 students were residing in 205 rooms of the existing RMC hostel on its buildings. Some students were accommodated in servant quarters and in houses reserved for professors, an official of RMC said. He said despite directions of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in April this year, NAB authorities failed to vacate the RMC girls’ hostel building. 

NAB occupied the girls’ hostel in 1999 to establish its offices and four accountability courts. Since then the RMC administration wrote many letters to provincial government seeking vacation of its hostel but all its requests fell on deaf ears. 

A Young Doctors Association (YDA) raised the issue and staged a protest on January 29 to get the hostel vacated. At this, the prime minister took notice and asked the bureau to vacate the hostel but the instructions were ignored by the bureau chiefs.   

RMC officials said as NAB was not ready to vacate the hostel, the college had decided to utilize two floors of nursing hostel at HFH to accommodate more than 140 girls’ student in 70 rooms. They said the nursing hostel’s two floors had been lying empty and Holy Family Hospital administration was planning to accommodate female doctors there.

However, the HFH officials, requesting not to be named, said nurses and doctors had resented the hospital administration move. They said more than 30 female doctors of Holy Family Hospital had submitted applications for accommodation.

When contacted, Medical Superintendent Dr Fayyaz Ahmed said he could not do anything in this regard. He said if someone had complaint, she should contact RMC Principal Dr Afzal Farooqi. Meanwhile, some NAB officials said they would vacate the building after getting an alternative place. But the NAB officials are not responding in a good way.