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Hygiene in dorms and cafeterias - below acceptable standard

Simina Mistreanu, Claudiu Ludoşan

A survey of student dorms and cafeterias in Bucharest has revealed unacceptable standards of basic hygiene at many facilities with the cleanliness of toilets providing a particular problem.

Dormitories offer a place to sleep sleep, but they don’t always offer protection from cockroaches, cracked water pipes and thieves who arrive posing as exterminators, hoping to cheat students out of their money or steal their possessions.

“We find cockroaches under the mattresses each time we clean up our room” said Dana Pamfile, a fourth year medical student who lives in the U5 dormitory of the Regie Campus.

“Nobody came to exterminate them, we did this by ourselves. We put down poison, but they return”, she said. She also has problems with water infiltrating through the walls.

“The pipes have been cracked for some time now and nobody repaired them. My roommates and I managed to fix them with a silicon gel”, said Pamfile.

“Cockroaches are everywhere, in my clothes and even in the fridge” said Laura Panait, a fourth year student at Foreign Languages. She lives with her husband in the P22-P23 dormitory in the Regie Campus. “If you leave a pan of oil, or a pot over night, you wake up in the morning with a bug in it”.

Scam artists and criminals who know about the bug problem regularly show up, hoping to take advantage of the situation. They enter the dormitory without permission and check if room doors are locked. If find an empty room, they go in and steal the occupant’s things.

“The exterminators are freaking junkies. They stole four mobile phones from our room. The Administration said that the only authorized exterminators are the ones accompanied by them. I’m moving to an apartment, it isn’t worth staying here” said Panait.



Students in the Leu dorms have the same problem with uninvited guests: bugs and drug addicts or homeless people who walk in as if they own the place. “I used to live in Grozavesti where we had a janitor. But here we don’t, and all junkies come to sleep and take a shower. And bugs run around the corridors”, said a fourth year student at Psychology who didn’t want to give her name.

Not all dormitories are equally bad. The Mihail Kogălniceanu Dormitory, near the Law School, is being renovated. Students are fairly satisfied with the standard of maintenance and hygiene.

“We have good conditions. You can see that the toilets are clean, I’ve never seen bugs. From this point of view, it’s OK” said Ştefan Cucu, a theology student who lives in the A wing. That just shows that clean dorms are possible.

One University official, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of getting in trouble with his superiors, blamed students for most of the problems. “Everything depends on the good breeding of the students. This summer, we exterminated the insects six times. The kids throw around food, and it’s only natural that cockroaches appear,” the official said.

Turning to the safety of food preparation, the Mihail Kogălniceanu Cafeteria is known for its various menus and low prices. The facility is checked weekly by Sanepid and The National Sanitary Veterinary Service. Iancu Bozu, the cafeteria’s administrator, assured us that if there was ever a case of sickness caused by food, these authorities would investigate, issue an analysis bulletin and a quality certificate.

The Leu Cafeteria is also supervised by Sanepid, the Politehnica University and other health organizations. The staff is also checked to ensure they follow hygiene procedures such as washing their hands after visiting the restroom.

“Our employees are qualified accordingly to their tasks and their health state is checked every three months”, said Ionel Vlăsceanu storehouse chief of the cafeteria. Even though the food tastes fine and the prices are low, we were concerned that staff serving food were not wearing gloves.

Inside university buildings, as is well known, the toilets often look abominable even if the cleaning ladies wash them several times a day. The cleaning ladies complain that they don’t receive enough washing materials like detergent, soap and chlorine.

The quality of the toilets can vary considerably between building and building. Some places have modern toilets equipped with sensors while others are still flushed by pulling on rusty wires.

Ultimul număr tipărit (mai 2007, format PDF):