CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1
INTRODUCTION
Housing generally refers to the social problem of ensuring
that members of a society have a home to live in, whether it is a house, or
some other kind of dwelling, lodging or shelter. Many government sector have a
department that deals with housing, such as the United State Department of
Housing and Urban Department.
Public Housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is
owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social Housing
is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned or managed
by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the two,
usually with the aim of providing affordable housing, social housing can also
be seen as a potential remedy to housing inequity.
Kwara State Polytechnic,
Ilorin as a case study was established by his Excellency, the then Military
Governor of Kwara State, Col. David Bamigboye. The decision to establish the
Polytechnic was announced during the launching of the four Year Development
plan in 1971.
The College eventually
came into existence following the promulgation of Kwara State Edict no. 4 of
1972 (now overtaken by the edict no. 21 of 1984, edict no. 13 of 1987 and edict
no, 7 of 1994) as a body empowered by statute “to provide for studies, training
research and development of techniques in art and language, applied science,
engineering, management and commerce, education as well as in other spheres of
learning”.
The Kwara State
Polytechnic formally commenced operation in January 1973 with an administrative
machinery patterned closely after the existing universities in the country. The
polytechnic has as its motto: TECHNOLOGY,
INNOVATION AND SERVICE
At its inception in 1973,
the Polytechnic had 110 students, 11 members of academic staff and 3 senior
administrative staff. The institution has now grown into having over 500
teaching and non-teaching staffs and 5,000students.
And since Housing to man ranks next to food and
clothing; and is very important to man and the lacks of it can have diverse
effect on him, it can psychologically affect him and can sometimes even reflect
on his work.
It is in view of this, that the polytechnic
developed and maintained staff quarters all over the Ilorin metropolis. As a
matter of policy, the polytechnic allocates these staff quarters to the staffs.
Staff Residential Quarters could be identified as housing Estates or based on
where they are located.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
There are a lot of
problems associated with the existing system
Some of these problems are:
1.Time
consuming: The existing system based on the fact that it operates manually
consumes too much time of both the applicants and the administrators.
2. Energy consuming: The workers expand much energy when searching for
files or information pertaining to an apartment or staff that applied or have
already been allocated an apartment.
3. Record gets missing or damaged: Since
the records are kept in manual files when all the files don’t hold the records
anywhere and as such records get misplaced or missing.
4. Allocation of already allocated apartments: If some records are no longer assessable, apartments that have long
been allocated might be allocated again to another person causing problems.
5. General statistics is difficult to get: To
get statistics such as total number of senior staff that have been allocated
apartments, total number of apartments etc.
6. Poor data security: The files can be stolen
or accessed by unauthorized persons as it is not secured by passwords etc.
1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The significance of this
project is to develop an authorized system that will effectively and
efficiently handle all the problems listed above.
This is very important as the importance of housing
cannot be over emphasized.
1.4 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study is to analyze the housing
allocation procedure of Kwara State Polytechnic with the view to computerize
the process of housing allocation. To achieve this, the study has the following
objectives:
I.
To look at the existing process of housing
allocation;
II.
To look at the problems in the documentation of
housing allocation data
III.
To make a comprehensive solution at solving the
problems (computer based system).
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The proposed system is
not a universally versatile system. It is limited to the project of the
Department of Works and Housing, and this project does not cover the whole
activities of the works department, it only covers Estates Management Section
which deal with the keeping of records of staff that are in Kwara State
Polytechnic Housing Estates.
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
1. The
program is designed to handle only the case study and will need little modification
to function in another organization.
2. If
password is misplaced or forgotten, there will be no access to any of the
facilities of the program.