With growing awareness among the general public about the education of girls up to higher levels, more and more parents are sending their daughters to professional colleges and the universities. However, the problem of accommodation for female students especially in the hostels built in and around the Peshawar University is gradually becoming acute with every new academic session. At present the university has on its campus about five hostels for girls including the Fatima Jinnah and the Benazir Hostels in which, collectively speaking, a total of 1,986 female students are putting up. The last hostel that one can recall to have been built on the campus was in 2006 that could accommodate about 350 female students. With increasing rush of students and mounting political pressure on the provost and wardens, the hostel administration has to dump five to seven girls in a room that initially housed two to three students. The result is that more studious of the girls have to suffer academically as they are less able to concentrate on studies in a crowded hostel room.
Although gas supply is available, the hostel management does not allow the girls to use heaters even in freezing temperatures. With all the five hostels overflowing with female students, the quality of food has also become understandably poor. The situation becomes unbearable when the rush on washrooms clogs the drainage system and the inmates are put to tremendous inconvenience. Frequent power breakdowns have reduced the study hours to a ridiculously small duration which cannot obviously guarantee better grades in exams. If the university can order the construction of 100 new bungalows for its teachers, it can certainly afford to have more hostels for girls.
