Safety of boarding houses

Sun, 25 Jun 2017 11:03:02 +0000

By Mark Kunda

The severe hardships that students are going through makes someone think that students are being punished for being intelligent.

Besides the mental and emotional torture from lecturers, some students are subjected to further unbearable suffering from landlords of boarding houses.

Some boarding houses are so unsafe and unfit for human habitation that students live in them because they don’t have an option.

In the old Zambia, once accepted at a university or college, you knew that good things were waiting for you. The acceptance letter alone was enough to give you reasons to walk tall, chest out and shoulders higher.

You knew that a safe conducive learning environment waited for you. In those days, universities and colleges provided everything you needed as a student such as decent accommodation in safe hostels, library facilities for studying, canteen for delicious meals, laboratories for experiments and classrooms with enough desks. In certain cases, all your expenses were paid for through bursaries from government or scholarships from companies.

Books were adequate. Writing assignments and conducting research were a joy.  As a student you only worried about studying and passing exams. Upon graduation, you knew that a good job waited for you and a good life ahead. Not anymore. Things have changed. Everything is going in reverse.

In the present Zambia, intelligence alone is not enough to guarantee academic success, you need some ‘jungle-skills’ to succeed.

The education system in our country has become like a jungle. The education support system has collapsed. Students are left to survive on their own without adequate support.

 Everyone is refusing to take responsibility providing support to students. Due to growing demand for higher education and lack of capacity to meet the demand, government was forced to liberalize the university education.

 In other words, the government pushed the responsibility of providing university education into the hands of the private. This move has seen the explosive birth of universities and colleges in Zambia.

Zambia desperately needs ‘birth control pills’ to control the birth rate of these so-called universities and colleges. These ‘briefcase’ universities and colleges do not own a single infrastructure except the office which they rent. Zambia is having universities and colleges which do not have classrooms, libraries, laboratories and hostels. With the advanced technology, students rarely have physical contact with lecturers or other university staff.

These universities advertise themselves through social media with beautiful pictures to entice students. Prospective students are told to apply through SMS’s and deposit the fees in the bank account.

 Everything is done on-line, no physical contact. The harsh reality dawns when students report for school. They will be told that the university or college doesn’t provide accommodation. At this point, the students will only think of ‘Plan B’, which is looking for a boarding house for accommodation. It’s not only the ‘briefcase’ universities and colleges who are failing to provide accommodation but well-established universities and colleges as well.

Education is turned into business. After discovering that providing university education is a huge responsibility, these briefcase learning institutions have pushed the responsibility of providing accommodation for students into the hands of private landlords.

Sometimes these universities and colleges look for boarding houses on behalf of students and charge commission on already expensive boarding houses. Their main interest is maximizing profits.

These profit-driven landlords are providing substandard boarding houses to students which don’t meet the minimum safety and health standards. Even people who once lived near or around universities and colleges have migrated to leave houses for rent to students. These landlords don’t care about the safety of students.

Most boarding houses are overcrowded. Most landlords have demarcated big rooms of the original house into smaller rooms. These small partitioned rooms are saturated with single beds. Some of these beds carry other beds on top.

The landlords charge rent per bed space. These landlords are not shy to charge as high as K1, 000 per bed space per month. So if the house has been partitioned to accommodate 10 beds, the landlord will be able to cash in k10, 000 every month, 5 times the normal rent if a single family rented the same house.

This money is not even utilized to maintain and improve the safety and health standards of the boarding house. These same small rooms serves as bedrooms, dining rooms and study rooms – all in one. Students come with their own kitchen utensils which they keep within their small rooms posing a tripping hazard. In the boarding house, students practice self-catering. These boarding houses lack basic items such as study tables and chairs for studying. Students are forced to study from their beds in an unsafe and awkward posture resulting in endless body pains, neck and backache.

Overcrowding in a boarding houses pose a number of safety and health risks such as spreading of diseases. Students are forced to share rooms with other students whom they don’t know their health status. I remember when I was accepted at Copperbelt University it was mandatory to undergo medical examination for all students. Students, who were found with health problems, were put on medication especially health problems which could potentially be passed on to roommates. This doesn’t happen in boarding houses. Overcrowding also makes students to start ‘fighting for space’. You will find students queuing for space to cook or to use a line to spread clothes after washing. Stealing, alcohol abuse, fighting, quarrelling and promiscuity are common in some boarding houses.

Most boarding houses have poor housekeeping and sanitation standards. While they modify the house to accommodate more students, most landlords don’t increase the number of shower rooms and toilets to match the number of students. You will find that a single toilet is being shared with countless number of students. With erratic supply of water, these toilets are often left in bad state. Both the toilets and shower rooms are over used as they handle more people beyond their design capacity. The floors of the shower rooms are constantly wet and slippery causing slips, trips and falls to students. Students make queues to answer the call of nature or to bath especially in the morning.

This is unsafe. The kitchen of a boarding house is another place of serious concern. Because students often share the same kitchen with a single stove, no one takes the responsibility to clean it after cooking. The dirty in the kitchen seems to bother no one as long as each student cleans his or her pots and plates. No one is held responsible for the cleanness of the kitchen and other common rooms like shower rooms and toilets.

You will find that the spillages of nshima when cooking keep on heaping on each other to the point whereby you can hardly see the plates of the stove. Waste management is quite poor. Waste generated in boarding house is kept in a plastic bag or in a small waste bin or just heaped in a corner. The plastic bag or waste bin is filled to the point of overflowing. The waste is kept for far too long without disposing it safely – the stench is unbearable. Such practices are unsafe and unhealthy.

Most boarding houses are poorly maintained. You will find that some of these boarding houses have poor lighting, poor ventilation and poor electrical fittings. Some boarding houses have naked wires without insulation posing a risk of electrocution to students.

If the boarding house doesn’t have adequate sockets, students will be forced to make illegal connections to charge their phones and laptops. Most boarding houses are not fitted with fire-detecting or firefighting equipment like smoke detectors or fire extinguishers respectively. In certain cases, drainage system is very poor which result in unnecessary floods thereby inconveniencing students. Very few landlords, if any, spray boarding houses to kill mosquitoes and other pests like cockroaches and bedbugs. Some boarding houses leak during rain seasons while others have broken windows exposing students to unnecessary cold.

As a landlord you have a responsibility to ensure that the boarding house is safe and fit for students. The boarding house is your investment which is giving you income. So take care of it. You need to limit the number of students in your boarding house. Rooms in the boarding house are not police cells. Make the rooms large enough. Students are big people who deserve privacy and decent living standards. Ensure that the number of students in the boarding house are not so many that they become a hazard to each other. Provide a maid to do general cleaning of common rooms like kitchen, shower rooms, toilets and the surrounding. If possible, provide a security guard to ensure security. It is so painful for students to lose valuable items like laptops, phones and money simply because the boarding house is unsafe. No student can manage to carry a laptop everywhere he or she goes for fear of losing. The bottom line is that ensure that the boarding house is safe, health and secured. This will give peace of mind to students and it will help them to concentrate on their studies.

As a landlord take time to inspect the boarding house. Carry out routine maintenance on your property. Poor maintenance will make your boarding house depreciate fast. Before you bring in a new student, make improvements. Paint the walls. Repair or replace damaged door handles, sockets, windows and blown out bulbs. Ensure that the boarding house has adequate sockets. Poor safety standards will put your boarding house at a risk of being gutted with fire.

You don’t want to lose your entire investment in a flame of fire. Provide adequate fire extinguishers. Ensure that waste is managed and disposed safely. I know sometimes the problem is with students. Unruly students deliberately cause damage to the boarding house. This can be disturbing and discouraging on your part. But despite this unavoidable behavior of some students, it does not eliminate your responsibility to ensure the safety of the boarding house. When an accident occurs in the boarding house, inspectors will hold you responsible – no excuse.

As a landlord of a boarding house, you are a parent. Treat the students as your own children. For some of these students, it’s their first time to be away from their parents and guardians to live on their own. Such students will need your guidance. Be a parent to them. Don’t subject the students to a substandard living environment which you or your own children wouldn’t want to be subjected to. Give a tenancy agreement to every student which should state clearly the rules expected in your boarding house. Don’t leave things to common sense that every student will reason on their own. Listen to the challenges students are facing and address them. Make the boarding house suitable and safe for living and studying. Studying is hard. Don’t make it harder by forcing students to live in an unsafe environment. Until next week, stay safe.

The author is the founder and CEO of SafetyFocus, a safety company committed to providing safety training, consultancy and supplying of safety products.

For your comments, contact the author on cell +260 975 255770 or email: marksucceed@gmail.com

Mark Kunda—Safety Consultant