The dorm was built in the 1970's | Photo by: Sinisa Jakov Marusic

“This has not been touched [reconstructed] since it was built,” complains Stevan, a third-year agriculture student at the Sts Cyril and Methodius University as he eats his sandwich in front of the Goce Delcev dormitory.

“You should see it inside, there is mould everywhere, lights go out every second night and the bathrooms are a nightmare,” he added.

He says he was not delighted when he was selected for a second year in a row to live in this dorm.

The security at the college entrance did not let BIRN enter the dorm and inspect. The management said it will “soon reply” to BIRN’s request to go in and look.

Built in the 1970, the complex of four blocs that houses more than 1,200 students of the Skopje state university was once a marvel of modernist architecture.

Official announcements that the dorm will be renovated have been frequent since one of the elevators collapsed in July 2011.

In April 2013, a fire blamed on old electrical wiring set several student rooms alight, prompting fresh reports of renovation that subsided as soon as the media forgot the event.

The dorm hit the spotlight again last March when images of its grim state, posted by students, drew thousands of comments on the internet around the world.

Images showed mould-covered walls, squalid toilets, decaying corridors, rooms damp from broken pipes and a canteen with a dismal-looking array of food.

“Nothing has changed since then. One wing has been somewhat fixed but our rooms are still like on those pictures,” says Maja, a student of Architecture who has spent a year in the dorm.

On Monday, students launched a fresh protest designed to remind the government of its broken promise.

The campaign “We won’t wait for elections” is organized by the informal student’s movement, the Student’s Plenum. The name of the initiative refers to the forthcoming early general elections set for next April.

The dorm’s architect, Georgi Konstantinovski, now retired, who took part in a debate organised by the Plenum, said that he felt sad to see the building in such a condition. “The only body that can help here is the state,” he said.

Students present at the debate watched the premiere of a student documentary about the dorm dubbed “Green walls, black food,” billed as a documentary about "the miserable life of 1,200 students living in a long forgotten dormitory."

“The first week I felt humiliated. The second week it all turned into inconvenience, and after a month I started turning a blind eye. When I went to the toilet, I felt several cold drops falling on me, and saw an occasional snail passing by,” one of the students, speaking under condition of anonymity, says in the documentary.

The ruling VMRO DPMNE party of Nikola Gruevski, in its past election platform, had promised a complete renovation of this dormitory by the end of this year. Three months before year end, only one wing of the dorm is reconstructed, the one that caught by fire in 2013.

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