hostel facilities

Are hostels open to all persons?

MANY people may have different meanings and definitions for a hostel. According to Casey Slide, a hostel is a low budget accommodation shared among travellers. When a guest books a stay in a hostel, he or she typically books a bed for the night, not a room. The guest’s bed may be in a room with four other travellers or in a room with up to 20 others. Bathrooms are dorm styles; large with several shower stalls and a row of sinks. Hostels usually have only one or two washrooms on each floor. Hostels tend to lend to more interaction, cost much less than a hotel, but do not provide the privacy or personal service found at the hotel.
This definition by Casey Slide tends to be different from the Ghanaian perspective of a hostel. In Ghana, hostels are built  mostly to accommodate students from far and wide. Due to the inability of some colleges to provide enough hostels to accommodate their student, some private investors have taken it upon themselves to build private hostels to support students who do not get accommodations on their various campuses.
My question is, are these private hostels truly supporting students (especially the female hostels)? I stayed in a private hostel throughout my days in college. I observed that there were some ladies in the hostel who were neither students nor travellers. These young ladies were not workers as well. But rather, they stay in the hostel during the day, go out only at night and come back the next morning or at dawn. Nobody knows what exactly they do. These people have occupied the hostel to the extent that students are encountering difficulties in getting accommodation for themselves.
Also the behaviour of these young ladies affects students resident in the hostels, especially, if a student unfortunately finds herself  sharing  the same room with one. They do not care whether their room mates are studying or not; they disturb  excessively; singing or making phone calls which  are  quite disturbing to others .   If  you appeal to them to  tone down, their  response is ‘this is a hostel not a private home” so they would do what pleases them.
 One can safely call this category of hostel dwellers as prostitutes who find it cheaper to live in hostels from where they can ply their night duties.
 Given this development, I suggest that all hostel managers or hostel owners  critically check the background of those  they accept into their various facilities. Accepting the few bad nuts into the hostels can also destroy the reputation of the hostels and tarnish the image of innocent residents and others who genuinely need accommodation to study or earn a decent living.
GLORIA NYARKO