After two years of rehabilitation, the renovated Muni National Teachers’ College in Arua was last Friday handed over to the ministry.
New education ministry permanent secretary Alex Kakooza, and the Belgium ambassador to Uganda, Hugo Verbist, formally received the institution, in what was also his first public function.
In his brief remarks, Kakooza told the gathering that the sector would not be held back by a fixed and small budget.
“All these challenges will be efficiently sorted out by the government through the education ministry, over time,” he said.
Renovation work was done through a partnership between the ministry and the Belgian Development Agency (BTC) under their Teacher Training Education project (TTE).
The TTE project is intended to provide an improved student –centred and practice-oriented learning environment in four teacher training institutions namely, NTC Muni, NTC Kaliro, National Instructors’ College Abilonino (in Lira), and the Health Tutors’ College in Mulago.
The renovation cost Shs 9.2bn and will allow the institution to use solar energy, biogas and water harvesting. Kakooza thanked the donors and charged the college administration to properly manage the facilities.
In his remarks, the college principal, Alfred Alija Alamvea, reported that the rehabilitation would allow Muni to admit more students.
“We currently have over 900 students but with the building of the new classroom blocks, we are looking at admitting about 1,400 students,” he said. “And for the new equipment especially the ICT and laboratory, we are guaranteed of quality education for our future teachers at this college.”
However, he also had some requests to make to the ministry.
“We are lacking a college bus to help us organise more field works for our students and we still have a problem of insecurity because our boundaries are open. Recently we lost four of our biggest goats,” Alija said.
Belgian Ambassador Hugo Verbist was pleased with the progress of the rehabilitation works and called for a public appreciation of what teachers do, before tasking government to actively join in the financing of such institutions.
“[Our] objective is to improve teaching and learning in teacher colleagues to strengthen the long-life capacity of professionalism. Together with focus, this is the approach to give a motivation to teachers and the future teachers,” he said.
“The ministry should increase the budget allocated to these institutions for maintaining and providing security for the newly-installed infrastructure.”
The second phase of the rehabilitation, which is set to start in early 2017, will cost Euros 25 million and will see renovation of the staff residential houses as well as female and male students’ halls of residence.
ABOUT MUNI
Muni National Teachers’ College is located 6km south of Arua town in Muni village and is fully-funded by the government. It is one of the national teacher training colleges in the country, and started in 1985, with just 20 students and three tutors. The staff size has since risen to 47 tutors.
