RAWALPINDI March 10 The business of letting out cheap accommodation, often in cramped buildings, to girl students and working women is booming in the city but without any official regulatory frame to ensure basic amenities and safety standards.

According to a fair estimate, Rawalpindi has more than 250 private hostels for girls, located mostly on the Benazir Bhutto Road, Rehmanabad, Satellite Town, Sadiqabad, Chandani Chowk, Asghar Mall, New Kattarian, Saddar, Peshawar Road and adjoining areas.

A single party, Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah Group, has at least 20 hostels for girls in Rawalpindi, including the ill-fated National Foundation Girls Hostel, where five students and a teacher were killed in a fire earlier this week.

Majority of the hostels have been established in old houses, which do not have layouts advisable for shared accommodation. They neither have facilities deemed necessary for independent living nor the emergency services needed to tackle any household accidents.

The fire at the National Foundation Girls Hotel on Monday came as a grim reminder that the hostel administrations as well as government agencies should follow some set of standards.

Though the cause of the fire has not yet been officially identified, investigators are looking at the possibility of an electric surge after restoration of power supply as a burnt-out iron was found in the room where the blaze started.

It has been learnt that around 90 percent of the hostels have no firefighting equipment.

“You tell me which hostel in the city has a mechanism to tackle any disaster situation,” said a female official of a hostel on Saidpur Road.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said it was the responsibility of the occupants to turn off the electric and gas equipment when they left their rooms.

Strangely, the Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonment boards say they have no authority to oversee the operations of private hotels, many of which are situated in their limits.

The City District Government Rawalpindi (CDGR) officials are also not aware of any department or office tasked with registering the hostels.

District Officer Social Welfare Aslam Maitla said his department was running two hostels in the city for working women. One is located in Shamsabad with accommodation for 20 women, while the other one is on Khana Road having accommodation for 50 women.

“But the social welfare department had nothing to do with licensing and regulating the private hostels,” Mr Maitla said.

Saeed Toor, a Rawalpindi administration officer responsible for registration of private firms, said his record showed that there was only one registered private hostel in Rawalpindi.

Information obtained from Mr Toor suggested that this hostel had probably been registered just to safeguard business interests as two partners are involved in the business.

The owner of an unregistered hostel, who identified himself only by his first name — Zeeshan, said that almost all the people setting up accommodation facilities for students informed the local police about their business. But Zeeshan did not have any convincible answer for the missing facilities.

Meanwhile, hostel inmates have their own stories to tell. They said the hostel administrators were charging high rents, as the average rate was Rs6,000 for a single bed, with three meals a day. And there are no recreational facilities.

“Hostels are not affordable and we are planning to hire a flat near our university in Islamabad,” said a group of girls residing in a Sadiqabad hostel.

Bushra Qayyum, who lives in a hostel in Satellite Town, said she was scared of staying in the hostel but her friends encouraged her.

She was of the view that most of the hostels were located at places where anti-social elements are present all around.

Another student, Munaza Saleem, said women living in hostels had to face harassment on daily basis, adding that they had no one to turn to for help.