University of Ghana Legon
First Year students of the University of Ghana, Legon, are facing accommodation challenges. This is due to insufficient number of rooms at the hostels.
All the rooms in the traditional and new halls of the university were booked barely two hours after the opening of the online residential accommodation on Monday, 31st August 2015.
Under the current system, students who secure accommodation in the first year will continue to be in the hall for the four year university program.
The difficulties of many fresh students, therefore, is that once they are unable to secure accommodation at the university’s halls, they will have to pay higher rents at the private hostels. The private hostels include African Union, Bani, Evandi, and Topp Nelson.
The traditional and new halls of the university charge GH¢794 and GH¢1,400, a year respectively, the private halls charge as much as GH¢ 2,500. The media was not able to get whole information on the number of applicants or the number of students who gained admission, because according to officials at the admissions office, admission was ongoing.
The private hostels, however, are more spacious and modern so a limited number of students share the toilets and bathrooms. Realizing the difficulty that the fresh students go through in securing accommodation, a Level 300 student of the university, Mr. Eugene Agyei, has volunteered to the fresh students and relay information on accommodation to them by creating a WhatsApp forum for that purpose.
He told the local media that the accommodation challenge was not a new phenomenon at the University of Ghana. He stated that, “All the rooms were booked 30 minutes after the opening of the online residential accommodation registration.”
He said that, “Many students who logged in 30 minutes later were disappointed because they could not register.”
Attempts by the many media members to get answers from administrative officials did not resulted because they would not comment on the issue.
