What should have been any other normal day at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) turned out to be the day when the university’s sole subsidised eating place, Pepsi Dining Centre (PDC) was boycotted by the majority of students in face of an unprecedented price hike of 33 percent just after seven months, Pakistan Today learnt on Monday.
On April 2, the LUMS Administration Department held a meeting with the PDC Committee to find ways to ‘control the deficit’ due to ‘ongoing inflation in prices of food items used in PDC’. The meeting then decided to implement the revised rates from April 5 and an email, without the new price list, was sent to the students.
This lack of transparency did not go unnoticed and one of the students, an Accounting and Finance major, whose queries were widely lauded, sent an email to the university’s email list, asking that the students be given an explanation for why PDC was not able to meet its cost even after serving over 3,000 people.
The student also asked that if the food that is leftover ‘comes up in the menu three days later’, LUMS was essentially not facing any loss.
Understanding that the alleged 33 percent price hike would ‘generate (concern) among many students’, LUMS Office of the Student Affairs Head Mazhar Chinoy assured the students’ body that he had checked the finances of PDC, and claimed they were facing a significant loss and were not even breaking even.
“The price hike should not really come as a huge surprise…current food inflation in Pakistan is estimated to be between 38-42 percent,” Chinoy added.
“What is of the main concern is that PDC standards have really fallen so we do not see the reason for a hike,” said a student, asking not to be named, adding “Incidents of hair, screws, cockroaches and rubber bands in our food are normal.
Main course meal finishes way before the set time, there is no cold water, ACs and fans are not turned on deliberately and the serving sizes have also decreased. They’re already making up for the loss by pulling such stunts, why raise prices then?”
Some students also pointed to the lack of staff and change at the PDC, while others said the staff does not even do as much as ‘give them extra tissue paper’. Another student said the ‘bureaucratic’ structure of PDC and the lack of competition had made the administration complacent, which necessarily meant that the place was a tyranny, adding that ‘nobody liked PDC’s food’ and the students were being ‘forced’ to eat it since there was no place else to go.
The discussion on the students’ email was then cut short by Chinoy, who asked the students to not to digress and to stop emailing, ‘please’.
However, soon enough, a Facebook page titled ‘Boycott PDC Day’, with over a 1,000 confirmed attendants, was set up and the debate was taken there.
Chinoy’s move of deterring the students from taking part in “student action (that) is not part of this university’s tradition” when there was “a council available to make student positions known in a civilised manner,” did not go down too well with the students either, who questioned why boycotting was dubbed ‘uncivilised’ by Chinoy when they were not burning tyres or breaking things.
The ‘puppet’ LUMS Student Council then emailed an ‘irrelevant’ report, that suggested ‘hilarious’ reasons for the problems being faced by the students, one of which dubbed the chef’s Rs 12,000 income the reason for bad food quality.
“The proposal is typical-Pakistani, all words and no action,” a student said.
Chinoy, however, doused all fire with water when he said, “a price hike cannot be helped” and all efforts would be made to mitigate it.
“We try our best not to let the effects of the inflation reach the students,” an officer in the LUMS administration, asking not to be named, said, adding “but this time there is no option left. We aren’t even breaking even.”
“LUMS generally is cash-strapped. Fee has been raised, the National Outreach Programme students’ monthly stipend has also been decreased so has the percentage of students studying on financial aid,” another official said, adding “many highly-paid instructors have left and fresh graduates have been hired to cut expenses also. Inflation hits everyone in the country, including LUMS and it’s the students that will have to pay for it eventually.”
‘Cash-strapped’ LUMS forces students to pay through their stomachs!
