The challenges of Students Accomodation: What Is CBU Doing?

The over 20 years of existence of the Copperbelt University has seen with it the Institution's growth in many ways that include, number of faculties, students population and graduates that go out to contribute to nationaldevelopment.

Since inception in 1987, faculties have grown from two (2) to seven (7); students' population from 514 to about 6000; and graduates from an average of 100 to 600.

In this process of growth, the Institution has been faced with the biggest challenge and this being, to bring the campus infrastructure to a level where it corresponds with the current state of affairs thus creating a conducive learning environment for competitiveness.

Male Student Hostels

Of particular interest is the effort the Institution has put in to address the problems of students' accommodation. Eventhough the Institution does not tie accommodation to admissions, Management has put the resolving of students' accommodation shortage as one of its priority areas.

Thus since 2007, the Institution,with the support of Government, has embarked on construction of students' hostels among other interventions. Currently there are 4 projects running to construct four blocks of students' hostels with a total project value of approximately K8 billion.

Construction of the 96 bed space Male students Hostels Phase 1 and 2 commenced on 27th October 2007 and 17th January, 2008 respectively and are at finishing level.Painting and carpentry works are at 80%. Wah-Kong Enterprises Ltd were contracted to do the construction works. The projects were delayed in the initial stages due to various reasons that included shortage of cement and weather conditions prevailing then.

The construction of the Female Students' Hostels (Phase1) by a Zambian Firm, Mace Construction Limited, commenced on 31st December, 2008 and is at 70% 1st Floor concrete slab level. The Phase (2) Female Students' Hostels construction works, being done by the same Firm, commenced on 15th July, 2009 and the project is already at roofing level. 

In the meantime, the Institution has encouraged landlords with houses in the surrounding areas to make them available for students to rent.

The Dean of Students, Mr Emmanuel Chunda said house owners had responded favourably and currently over 60 students are accommodated outside CBU.

"We have encouraged landlords with houses to come forward and make available their houses or guest wings. The response has been good," Mr. Chunda said.

Mr Chunda said the University "is looking for developers who can go into build-operate-transfer arrangement with the Institution as another way of mitigating the accommodation Shortage."

He said this meant that the University would allocate land to a developer who would then build hostels, operate them and hand them over to the Institution after recovering his/her investment. "We are appealing to business entities to take advantage of this and enter into partnership with the Institution," he said.

In an interview, the Assistant Registrar, Accommodation, Mr. Kufanga Mate, said currently the hostels has a total capacity of 1900 bed spaces including the flatlets which were initially meant for staff development fellows, and some common rooms which were designed for students' recreation now partitioned for bed spaces.

Mr. Mate said that this year,the Dean of Students Department received 1371 applications from first year students and 1241 applications from returning students who were not accommodated the previous years. Out of these, 425 first years and 228 were considered according to the available bed spaces.

He said it was very difficult to decide on who to accommodate but the work was made easier with the use of the student's accommodation guidelines which were developed by a committee comprising Assistant Deans of schools and staff from the Dean of Students Department.

"Some of the guidelines include the equal sharing of bed spaces by schools and programmes of study as well as students' domicile before coming to the CBU," he said.