The University of Zambia Student Union UNZASU has threaten that it will begin to take legal actions if the University Management continues leasing/selling off of more University/student land.
UNZASU President Chandra Choongo said the decision by management to lease/sell off more of the university land is a backward and bad decision because the true wealth of any institution or any person is in the land.
According to an invitation to submit expression of interest seen by the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, UNZA has put out for long term lease and development of over 6 hectares of its prime land south west of its Great East Road campus for long term lease and development to generate the much needed revenues.
UNZA has further put out another 8,000 square meters of its Marshlands village Great East Road frontage land for private development as well as another 33 hectares of its land between the Chinese built ZNS milling plant and the Chinese Memorial Park along Great East Road.
As if the above offloading of land is not enough, the UNZA management has further offered for long term lease about 15 hectares of its remainder of land at UNZA Nursery in Burkley.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT – Choongo questioned management’s decision to lease/sell land when the institution is expected to develop the land especially that the institution has experts who are expected to advise management on better investments/projects that the land can be used on.
He said an institution like the University of Zambian should not be involved much on the side of selling considerable of the land because it has almost all qualified professionals in a number of faculties hence developing an investment in any land should not be an issue for a leading training institution like UNZA.
“In such cases like that you can sell the land and use the money but what happens when you are broke again? So the culture that UNZA has of selling off the university land is too backwards from my learning when the university by now is expected to have had developed mechanisms on how they are going to be using their land to generate the much needed revenue.”
“UNZA had about 10 farms in each province but they have been selling up to the extent where we are now and if this persist they will completely sell the whole UNZA land and the university will have no land for infrastructure development.” Remarked UNZASU President.
“Just like they have been selling at the main campus in Lusaka, we are now talking of sharing a corrido with east park and now talking about getting disturbed by the noise coming from bars at the mall which has the impact of changing the behaviour of the students in campus and at the end of the day increasing the number of students who are getting diseases.”
“The selling of land by the management is something that the union and the student populous is not in support of and if it persist even after engaging the management the Union will begin to take legal actions against the management.”
He said the university is losing more than it is gaining and in future there is a possibility of the university ending up without a land as the institution keeps on expanding.
We are talking of increasing the numbers of the lecture theatres, and other faculties that are required by the university of which the same land is supposed to be used so the impact is negative as the population is increasing and the institution is also likely to keep on increasing at the end of the day.
We are urging the university management to develop new mechanism on how to develop their own land and generate the needed revenue that will benefit both the students and the management.
Choongo said the Union was yet to meet and question management and we are yet to put a limit by saying that the land is student land and if that repeats itself we have to start suing the management.
