Machakos University
admits
pioneer class
By Martin Masai
The Joint Admissions Board (JAB)
has admitted the pioneer batch of students to begin the classes at Machakos
University College in September 2012 .
This comes even as the State
drags its feet over the appointment of a University Council to manage what will
now be known as Machakos University College, the successor of Machakos
Technical Training College. Observers see the failure to name a University
Council as a key omission. The Chair of the University Council is to follow
later. Prof Chrispus Kiamba, the Permanent Secretary for Higher Education told
The Anchor that the appointment of the Council was being addressed.
But as we went to press, The
Anchor was informed that the students will not report to the institute as scheduled.
A staff meeting at the Institute was told to inform the freshers to report to
Kenyatta University as classes would commence in January 2013, an indication
that something is terribly wrong with the formation of the Machakos University
College
The campus will operate for
three years before standing alone as a fully fledged university. Even then, a
visit to the University Website, updated on June 7 2012, makes no mention of
Machakos University College and neither is the campus listed among KU’s 11
campuses and colleges, a very curious omission indeed.
It marks a great transition in the history of
Education in Machakos County after MTTI held what may go down in history as its
last graduation ceremony as a tertiary training institution in June 2012.
It is not that it is winding up.
No. It is because it has attained the coveted status of a University College.
This transition comes fittingly after a long wait during which it nearly became
a polytechnic, but by a twist of fate or destiny has finally become Machakos
University Collage.
This new status was created via
Kenya Gazette Notice Number 130 of Sep-tem-ber 16, 2011. The University Collage
becomes the successor of the Machakos Technical Training Institute.
It will operate as a Campus of
Kenyatta University, with the status of a con-stituent college of Kenyatta
Uni-ver-sity being Tran-si-tional only. The Gazette notice re-quired Kenyatta
University to initiate the necessary administrative and legal measures to
ensure that the University College becomes a fully fledged University.
This development comes after a
good 55 years of hard work and waiting. It is a pleasant surprise to many who
have been waiting for the actualization of a pledge by the Government five
years ago to make the Institute the first fully fledged national polytechnic in
the whole of Eastern Province.
During the MTTI’s 6th graduation
cer-emony presided over by the then Minister for Science and Technology Dr Noah
Wekesa in 2008, it was announced that the institute would become a National
Polytechnic.
But this did not happen, thanks
to typical red tape and understandable bu-reau-cracy associated with
Gov-ernment. Neither has there been an explanation why the poly status never
came-nor does no one want it anyway.
After years of build-up under
the stew-ardship of the Principal Mrs Mary Muthoka, together with a Board of Gov-er-nors chaired
by Prof Peter Mbithi, the University of Nairobi’s Deputy Vice Chan-cellor for
Finance and Ad-min-is-tration, there is no doubt that the time for MTTI to
become a uni-ver-sity could have been better.
The name- Machakos Technical
Training Institute- is associated with the very beginning of technical training
in the expansive region and is viewed by many as a treasured graduation from
what was initially a technical school
The institute was started in January
1957 as a rural technical training school offering tailoring and carpentry
courses. It was then run by the local county council before the government took
it over and renamed it the Macha-kos Technical Trade School a year later. It
was later to become Machakos Tech-nical School, offering secondary school
curriculum.
It was one of the nineteen
government national technical secondary schools which were upgraded to post
secondary training institutes with the advent of the 8-4-4 system of education
in 1985.
Its secondary school status was
phased out in 1987 with the last batch of high school students completing their
K.C.S.E in No-vem-ber 1987.
The institute currently offers
22 di-ploma courses and 28 different training programmes spread across 60
different courses This elevated status, though significant, may introduce some
challenge to the thousands of students unable to attain university entry grades
who have for years taken the middle level courses offered by MTTI.
The training programmes which
have been fully established in the last 15 years include accounting, business
ad-min-is-tration and management, car-pen-try, clothing technology and
co-operative management. This training has been so perfected at MTTI that the
institution is a Centre of Excellence in Clothing Technology.
In addition there are courses in
Elec-trical Engineering, Electronics, Food and Beverage production service,
mechanical and motor vehicle en-gi-neering, marketing man-agement, secretarial
studies, supplies man-agement and welding and fab-ri-cation.
The development comes at a time
MTTI is about to complete a 50 bed capacity hotel that is planned to be a
training facility for Tourism students on the same level with Nairobi’s Utalii Hotel. Its Le Technish Restaurant has
been making the foun-dation for the es-tab-lishment of the hotel, bringing
competitive service in hotel man-agement to Machakos and beyond
The Le Technish restaurant with
modern well equipped facilities and which is
situated within its compound apart from acting as a training ground for
students taking catering courses also supplements the institute’s income as it
hosts semi-nars and special parties.
While many parents have
previously been forced to take their children elsewhere to pursue higher
education, this de-vel-opment will certainly bring a sigh of relief.
The Machakos University Collage
comes to join the South Eastern University Collage(SEUCO), whose Machakos
Campus opened doors for Under Graduate and Masters students recently. Other
universities in the municipality include St Pauls Uni-ver-sity, Nazarene
University and Scott Christian
Uni-ver-sity,
The turning of the institute
into a Uni-ver-sity comes with a demand for improvement of the current
in-fra-struc-ture.
The Universities will also put
pressure to Machakos Town to increase its capacity to deal with such a teaming
number of institutions of Higher learning, which come with an equally damning
demand for services and infrastructure. Ob-servers see this as a turning point
for the town founded in 1897 the Imperial British East African
Company.
