CBU, TAZARA to collaborate over training

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:05:30 +0000

By SANDRA MACHIMA

THE Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) and the Copperbelt University (CBU) intend to enter into business agreements for joint university programmes at the TAZARA Training School in Mpika.

The training school currently has the capacity to accommodate at least 300 students, with plenty of scope for expansion.

The joint programme would access CBU students to TAZARA’s vast engineering workshops, which were originally set up to provide all kinds of engineering services to TAZARA from inception.

CBU Vice Chancellor Professor Nayson Ngoma said the project was the start of a great new and exciting adventure between the university and TAZARA.

Prof Ngoma said the CBU programmes would be greatly enriched with practical approach that would enable its graduates to be appropriate to the workplace upon being employed or if they choose to employ themselves.

Now CBU has arranged an orientation tour of the TAZARA installations by CBU deans and directors aboard TAZARA’s Mukuba express passenger train.

The university management team would be undertaking a tour to understand the operations of TAZARA and lay ground for the memorandum of understanding (MoU) to be signed soon between TAZARA and CBU to establish a joint training institute at TAZARA’s Training Centre in Mpika, offering various programmes, including in-service training and short courses in mechanical engineering.

The university would also be undertaking an orientation workshop to enhance teamwork and skills of members of staff, as well as create a common understanding of the delivery framework of the strategic plan.

TAZARA managing director, Bruno Ching’andu, said that was the beginning of a beautiful journey of collaboration between two public institutions.

He said the programme was another model of Public Private Partnership where one institution would creatively leverage its capacity to expand its services using the under-utilized vast resources of the other.

While in Dar es Salaam, the team will tour TAZARA’s Dar es Salaam workshops and the University of Dar es Salaam.