ISLAMABAD, Nov 9: After suffering the sore of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) that had grown on its body for nine years, the Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC) has taken a pain-killer pill.

RMC has stopped paying for the maintenance of one of its hostels for girls that NAB has been occupying since 1999 for its office without paying any rent ever.

“We have been spending more than Rs400,000 every year on the maintenance of the building (occupied by NAB), but this year we stopped. The RMC Board believes that NAB should at least bear the maintenance cost,” Dr Musaddiq Khan, principal of the college told Dawn.

A NAB official approached on the issue said on condition of anonymity that both NAB and RMC were government entities and “there are no transactions between government to government organisations”.

In any case, the real cost is being paid by the hundred of girl students of the RMC who, deprived of hostel facilities, had to hire alternative accommodation and spend time and money on commuting to the college.

Dr Musaddiq said the RMC administration had been pleading with NAB for years to vacate its hostel on PAF Road, Rawalpindi, for the suffering girl students but the NAB authorities always turned a deaf ear to the request.

More than 750 girl students of RMC are learnt to have sought hostel accommodation but only 150 of them could be accommodated.

RMC has two hostel buildings on PAF Road of which the bigger is occupied by NAB.

“Another problem that we foresee is that 60 to 70 more girls are expected to join the new class starting from November 15 who would need hostel accommodation and we have none,” said the college principal.

A senior official of NAB, who did not want to be named, argued that NAB was a government organisation established under NAB Ordinance and it was the government which provided it office.

“Unless we are provided an alternative office building how can we move out of the exiting one,” he said.

The official agreed that the bureau was not paying any rent to the RMC for occupying its building. “There is no transaction between government to government organisations,” he said.

Dawn has learnt that NAB's regional headquarters in other cities also are facing similar problems.

In Lahore, the Punjab government has made NAB vacate its two buildings while the Sindh government has asked NAB to remove its offices from the provincial government’s building.

The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has reportedly asked NAB to pay the cumulative rent for its building occupied by NAB’s regional office.