All polytechnics will be converted to varsities - President Mahama assures
President John Dramani Mahama has given an assurance that none of the 10 polytechnics will be left out of the government’s programme to convert the institutions to technical universities.
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He said measures had been put in place to, as soon as possible, enhance the infrastructural and human capacities of those that did not meet the criteria required of them to be converted into technical universities.
President Mahama gave the assurance when he cut the sod for the construction of a new campus of the Kumasi Polytechnic (K-Poly) at Piase in the Bosomtwe District in the Ashanti Region on Tuesday as part of his ‘Accounting to the People’ tour of the Ashanti Region.
The new campus is on a 200-acre land.
The President also inaugurated an energy renewable centre and an entrepreneurial village for the polytechnic.
The three-day Ashanti regional tour is the seventh to be undertaken by the President.
Polytechnic Bill
President Mahama said the bill to convert the polytechnics into technical universities was before Parliament and that its passage would actualise the dream of enhancing the country’s manpower towards the transformational agenda.
He said a number of lecturers had been offered scholarships to build their capacities through various academic development programmes to qualify them as lecturers of technical universities, while infrastructure, including laboratories, was being provided to meet the requirement.
He said through public-private partnerships, additional facilities such as hostels and shopping malls would be provided on the new K-Poly campus.
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Other initiatives
President Mahama said the Kumasi Shoe Factory would supply 100,000 sandals to schoolchildren in deprived schools at the start of the 2016/2017 academic year.
He also announced that very soon work would commence on the second phase of the Kumasi Airport expansion.
The President told the people of Piase that six million gallons of water had been added to potable water supplied in Kumasi alone following the expansion of the Barekese Dam.
Training of teachers
The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, said about 5,000 Mathematics teachers had been given additional training.
She said Ghana needed to rethink and turn its raw materials into either semi-finished or finished products in order to earn more.
She said technical education was the answer to bridging the gap created over the years.