NEW TOURISM COLLEGE TO BE SET UP IN KILIFI
(Posted 26th June 2013)
A regular source from Mombasa has confirmed that the current visit to the coast by Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie, who holds the tourism portfolio besides regional cooperation and commerce, will have her see the proposed site in Kilifi for the new tourism college, for which the sector has been advocating for a long time.
Initially due to be build by Utalii College in Nairobi, Kenya’s and the region’s premier hospitality and tourism training institution, it will now be put up using the Tourism Fund, which was formerly known as the Catering Training Levy Trustees. The Tourism Fund is part of the new institutional set up of the tourism public sector administration, alongside a number of other parastatals bodies in charge to look after separate segments of the industry.
Information given speaks of a cost of over 8 billion Kenya Shillings, which will include not only the purpose built campus with state of the art facilities, but also an attached application hotel, conference rooms and leisure facilities. It is expected that President Kenyatta, during one of his forthcoming visits to the coast, will officially lay the foundation stone as construction is ready to kick off, with a contractor apparently appointed and presently mobilizing resources to set up a base on the 60 acres site in Kilifi.
The new college will be called the Ronald Ngala Utalii University, named after a leading coast politician of pre and post independence days who represented his constituency in parliament and served in Jomo Kenyatta’s cabinet, Kenya’s founding father and dad to the current president Uhuru Kenyatta.
Tourism stakeholder have welcomed the move and several in fact commented that the establishment of a proper hospitality and tourism training college at the coast is long overdue, as manpower development and skills transfer have suffered in past years as a result of the main Utalii College in Nairobi, and its satellite campuses, was massively oversubscribed offering places only to a chosen few and leaving out those not selected to be at the mercy of private colleges, many of which are not up to the standards the sector would like to see. Watch this space for future updates about the start of construction and the progress until completion.
