By Evance Chisiano

Blantyre, August 10, Mana: The Malawi Posts Corporation (MPC) and Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) have signed a lease agreement for MUST to operate in Blantyre campus at MPC premises at Chichiri as the university is driving towards expansion outside Ndata campus in Thyolo district.

Postmaster General, Angel Banda and MUST Vice Chancellor, Professor Address Malata signed the lease agreement with each seeing the agreement as an opportunity to socio economic development in terms of revenue mobilization and courier services on the part of MPC and tertiary education expansion for MUST.

Banda said the agreement was in line with Malawi Posts Cooperation’s turnaround strategy, which is meant to improve operational efficiency and turning the corporation’s underutilized assets into profitable assets of economic value.

The Postmaster General described the signing agreement as a positive step in the right direction and regarded MUST as an important partner.

“We are happy to have MUST as partner. Having MUST here in Blantyre is a right decision because we will also benefit from this agreement especially on our courier services,” she added.

MUST will run the Chichiri campus for Open Distance Learning and other under and post graduate programmes thereby taking tertiary education closer to people.

“MUST is clocking ten years of existence and this shows we are growing. We need to expand and opening a campus here in Blantyre is in line with our aspirations to expand to other areas outside Ndata,” Professor Malata added.

The MPC facility, which will now become MUST Blantyre campus is situated next to what used to be Multicounty Training Center behind Blantyre Museum.

MUST Vice Chancellor disclosed that the new campus will start operating by January next year upon National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) assessment.

She observed that the MPC facility which will soon turn into MUST Blantyre campus has what it takes to be a campus saying the facility has offices, classrooms and space for accommodation.

“We are looking forward to operate here because we want to expand, a good university need to be everywhere,” she added and disclosed that MUST has secured land near Kamphata in Lilongwe for Kamphata campus.