THYOLO Malawi, April 22(Maravipost)–The newly appointed Council of the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) on Tuesday held its first meeting where, among others, it officially received six staff houses and three state-of-the-art laboratories on behalf of the college.
The University was built without staff houses and all staff members reside in Blantyre.
Speaking during official hand over of the facilities, MUST Council Chairperson, Dr Andrew Daudi said with the facilities, the University will now cut expenses considering that pioneer students were having their laboratory sessions at the University of Malawi (Unima) colleges such as the Polytechnic, College of Medicine and Chancellor College.
“This was an inconvenience to both the Unima colleges and MUST. For the Unima colleges, they had to alter their programmes to accommodate our students while for MUST, this was a drain on its resources as it had to pay for use of the labs, transport the students to and from and in case of Chancellor College, find accommodation and provide meals for students.
“Now with our own laboratories, we will be able to have lab sessions when we need to and not when laboratories at Unima colleges are free,” said Daudi.
He also said more houses are needed and that they will be built in phases for critical staff members to stay on campus to ably respond to emergencies.
With Malawi Housing Corporation as the constructor, the initial budget for the houses was K144,550,529.77, but as “we receive them today, they have cost us K150,000,000.00”.
“This was mainly due to changes in design,” he added.
The houses, whose construction works started on December 9 2013 were initially expected to be ready by April 30 2014, but delayed due to some challenges.
While construction works for conversion of ordinary classrooms into laboratories started on January 13 2014 with Blithe Construction as the contractor, were expected to ready by April 7 2014.
The initial budget for the labs was K140,739,247.00, but doubled to K239,090,939.00. The three labs can seat 160 students at one go. The smaller one can accommodate 40 while the bigger ones can each seat 60 students.
“The laboratories will be used for Biology, Physics and Chemistry students. However, MUST needs more labs and engineering workshops.
“This means that our students will still be on the road to access such facilities, especially engineering workshops hence the need to work towards having our own,” said Daudi.
