HUNDREDS of angry Al-Azhar University students protested against deteriorating conditions at university dorms after 540 students, according to the Ministry of Health, contracted food poisoning when they ate university-provided meals on Monday night, reports Ahmed Morsy. After gathering in the hundreds, angry students blocked Al-Nasr Street, the Autostrad road, on both sides, including the entry to the 6 October flyover in Nasr City, causing a traffic jam in the whole of Nasr City as of 9pm; it lasted for hours. Dozens of ambulances trapped in traffic continued transporting patients from the university's male dorm to nearby hospitals till the early hours of Tuesday morning. The prosecutor-general has ordered an investigation into the case and Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb has also reportedly ordered an investigation in conjunction with the hostel's nutrition officials. “The students are not demanding the impossible; all we want is to be treated as humans,” Mohamed Sayed, a 22-year-old student from the Faculty of Agriculture, told Al-Ahram Weekly. “The meals served at the hostel on Monday were of obviously poorer quality than usual,” Sayed said. At night, he adds, dozens were taken to hospital with food poisoning . On Tuesday morning, the students cut off the Autostrad again and violent clashes broke out between students and staff at Al-Azhar University. At noon thousands of students marched to the headquarters of Al-Azhar on Salah Salem Road. They stormed the headquarters and blocked the traffic, demanding the dismissal of the university president, Osama Al-Abd, and the intervention of Al-Tayeb to improve services at the facility. The students started an indefinite sit-in at the garden of the headquarters of Al-Azhar. “We are forgotten, faced by negligence from the management of Al-Azhar University,” Sayed told the Weekly while marching to the building. “It is not the first time we have eaten such poor food. It started months ago. The supplied food for both male and female dorms is always rotten; that's why we staged a protest a month ago for the same reason.” Last month, students from the female dorm of Al-Azhar University held protests objecting to the quality of the food served at the dormitories and the poor conditions of the buildings and facilities. Some female students were assaulted by university employees during the protests, increasing tensions between students and the administration. “We filed many reports with the Nasr City police regarding the worms in the food and appeared on many satellite channels complaining of the negligence from Al-Abd,” Ahmed Mansour, another student of Al-Azhar University, said. During the protest, some students demanded not only the sacking of Al-Abd, but also the dismissal of Al-Tayeb himself. This was interpreted by some observers as an attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to replace Al-Tayeb with another imam who would serve the interests of the organisation. Commenting on such rumours, Sayed said, “our main demand is not sacking Al-Tayeb but the dismissal of Al-Abd, since he doesn't take our interests into account and doesn't respond to our demands.” In addition to poor food and negligence, the students also complained of the lack of hygiene in the bathrooms of the hostels and the university besides the deteriorating conditions of facilities in general.
