• On completion, the two hostels will accommodate 1,000 students, most of them women
• Part of the university land has been encroached on by private developers
Image: Alice Waithera
Image: Alice Waithera
Students' accommodation at Murang’a University of Technology will ease after the construction of two hostels at a cost of Sh360 million.
The two blocks will mitigate the acute shortage of accommodation for students, the majority of whom are tenants in Murang’a town.
Vice-Chancellor Dickson Nyariki said only 600 students out of 5,000 reside at the institution. This is a security risk to the learners as they commute from and to private hostels and rental houses.
The first of the two blocks will cost Sh160 million. The government is yet to release Sh90 million to complete it.
The university is ploughing revenue collected as fees into the project that is 45 per cent complete.
The block will accommodate about 500 students from September next year.
Nyariki told the County Development Implementation Coordination Committee that the second block will cost Sh200 million. It is 50 per cent complete but has stalled due to delayed funding from the government.
The government has only released Sh90 million.
The block will accommodate an extra 500 students. “The two blocks will be able to accommodate all first-year and female students within the institution,” Nyariki said.
The vice-chancellor has in the past pleaded with local entrepreneurs to build hostels to help accommodate students.
MUT received a charter two years ago. Since then the number of students has spiked from about 2,000 and causing a sharp accommodation shortage.
Another development project at the university in progress is the construction of a Sh339 million science complex. It is 40 per cent complete.
Some Sh111 million has already been spent on the project which is expected to be ready by the end of next year, the professor said.
Members of the university council appealed to the CDICC to assist in the reclamation of part of its land that has been encroached on by private developers.
They said the university has written to the National Land Commission for assistance after its fencing project stalled over the matter.
The university started erecting a perimeter wall around its 50 acres to beef up security in 2017 but the project stopped as some private residences were in the compound.
CDICC chairperson Mohammed Barre pledged to assist the university by engaging NLC to allow the fencing to continue.