Maintenance Office: A Cry for Help in Our Hall Of Residence

Yusuf Kawthar Bukola writes,

One of the facilities provided by the university authority to make students enjoy their stay in the hostel is the maintenance office.

The maintenance office in Usmanu Danfodiyo University’s halls of residence is a building put in place to ensure that all the hostel facilities are in good condition and place. Simply put, it is an office within the school hostel, that’s charged with the responsibility of listening to the students’ complaints about the amenities provided to make their stay on the campus hostel easy and enjoyable.

However, the current state of the maintenance office is farfetched from the purpose which it has been put in place to fulfil. The maintenance office is lagging behind in keeping up with the complaints and needs of students residing in the campus hostel.

As a custom, the school sends out all occupants of the hostels at the end of a session in order to roll out a new list of occupants to occupy the hall of residence (hostel). As a result of this custom, many students often end up in a new room with amenities’ default probably caused by previous occupants of the room which often cause students to storm the maintenance office more than usual.

It is however sad that the maintenance office has not been forthcoming towards solving the problems facing the students in the hall of residence.

According to one of the residents of the hostel who claimed anonymity, the maintenance office has refused to come to repair their broken door for over a week even after writing a letter to request for the repair of the door.

While discussing with another resident, she claimed bitterly about how their electronics (fans, sockets and bulbs) haven’t been working for more than two weeks when she moved into the room.

She said; “Walai, since I moved into my room we are suffering for light and socket in my room. And it’s not only my room but the room beside ours. I’ve been to the maintenance office twice now but they’re always not around.”

It is not even surprising that while some rooms have their fans and sockets working, some rooms only have their bulbs on. Toilets bulbs aren’t working, most windows are broken and exposed, and most taps and tanks aren’t working.

All these issues and more, are the problems ravaging the halls of residence.

Dear maintenance office, we appreciate your efforts to make our stay in the halls of residence enjoyable and comfortable, but we need you to listen to our cries and come to our aid. We want our maintenance office to work efficiently. We need a circular stating what time and days you’d be available.

We want frequent checkups on our hostel facilities and lastly, we want you to bear with all our complaints and be steadfast with them.