LUSAKA BOARDING HOUSES RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE

Dear Editor,

The charges landlords are demanding just for a bed space in boarding houses in Lusaka are ridiculously exorbitant as opposed to their counterparts on the Copperbelt.

At some boarding houses, students are paying as much as between K1, 000 and K2, 000 for a bed space a month.

Surely this is way too much, especially where landlords are offering substandard facilities! Many are actually.

What these landlords seem to forget is that their tenants are students who do not work and therefore rely on parents.

So where do these landlords expect these students to get money from. K1000 or worse K1,500 is too much and by the way this is rent parents are paying for the whole house in some areas.

It is clear here that the whole concept of boarding houses has been misunderstood by many socalled landlords and this has been exacerbated by failure by universities to provide adequate accommodation within their campuses.

The concept in itself is wonderful and is a common practice elsewhere in the world.

However, in Zambia landlords, especially in Lusaka have taken advantage of the situation and come up with ridiculous charges for bed spaces to make a killing. It’s not about service but just profit.

I humbly appeal to government is to compel universities that have no hostels to build some which will be affordable to majority of the students.

Unless it’s a university without walls or open university, that’s a different story all together.

Those that offer fulltime programmes should be compelled to build hostels to accommodate students otherwise at the rate we going, education remains largely a preserve for the rich and a few who can afford because tuition fees student accommodation have become extremely costly.

Concerned Parent LUSAKA