Minister lauds UEW for expansion work

The Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah, has commended the management of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) for judiciously using its Internally Generated Funds (IGF) to undertake massive infrastructural projects in readiness to admit the first batch of graduates of the free Senior High School (SHS) policy.

He said the move demonstrated the university’s productive use of its IGF to add on to its existing facilities so as to be well-positioned to admit more of the first batch of the free SHS graduates who would seek admission into public universities this year.

He said “I am highly impressed about the fact that about 90 percent of projects currently ongoing at all the UEW campuses are being funded internally,” saying that such an intervention demonstrated the commitment of the university’s management towards its growth and development.

Visit

Prof Yankah made the commendation in an interview with the media when he inspected completed and ongoing projects at the Winneba campus of the UEW last Friday.

He was accompanied by the Vice Chancellor, Rev Fr Anthony Afful-Broni; the Pro Vice Chancellor, Prof Andrew Ofori-Birikorang; the Registrar, Mr Paul Osei Barimah; the Librarian, Mr Viscount Buer and other high profile staff of the university.

The visit was to afford him the opportunity to assess the readiness of UEW in terms of infrastructure to accommodate the unusually high influx of SHS graduates who would come out of the various SHSs across the nation this year.

The university with funding from its IGF is undertaking a number of projects at the North, Central and South campuses which make up the Winneba campus and others at the Ajumako, Asante Mampong and Kumasi campuses.

Projects

The UEW management in anticipation of the high student numbers this year has undertaken a number of projects to be able to accommodate them.

Amongst the projects are the construction of an ultra-modern student’s service centre, a food court, 10 lecture blocks, each to accommodate 500 students, conversion of lecture rooms to an ICT library, renovation of a brail library as well as the construction of lecturers’ offices.

Others are the construction of two storey residential facilities, each with a capacity to accommodate 4,000 students as well as the completion of a five storey lecture block and the renovation of the Amu Theatre at the Central campus which are expected to be completed by March and June 2020 respectively, among many others.

Not many GETfund projects

He said that although there were not many projects in the university being funded by the Ghana Education Trust Fund, management had shown leadership by investing a chunk of the institution’s IGF to expand facilities to augment that of the government.

“I am indeed very satisfied after inspecting many of the ongoing projects at the UEW being executed by management to increase access as well as provide a congenial learning environment for the students” he stated.

He explained that government would continue to expand facilities at all the public tertiary institutions in the years ahead so that they would be able to admit the extra students in the wake of the free SHS policy.

He admonished the contractors executing the various projects to expedite work to meet the deadlines and ensure that the projects are of high quality to stand the test of time to achieve value for money.

Not just numbers

He stressed further that government was not only interested in increasing access to tertiary education but would also improve the lecturer-student ratio to enhance effective and efficient teaching and learning to meet international standards.

“Government’s vision is to ensure that the standards at public tertiary institutions met that of other international universities so that it would encourage particularly exchange programmes among them” he pointed out.

He mentioned that “government is mindful of the huge numbers of students that would be seeking for admissions into tertiary institutions this year, and would therefore not sacrifice quality for mere numbers”.

Touching on ensuring lasting peace and stability, he charged the management to continue to build bridges to ensure peace and stability at the campuses to enhance academic work for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Most populated university

For his part, Rev Fr Afful-Broni, said that the UEW which is currently the most populated public university in Ghana with a current student population of 85,004, would continue to expand facilities at its six campuses as well as construct more distance education study centres to bring quality teacher education to the doorsteps of potential students.

He stated that the vision of the management is to expand and increase access to be able to train the required human capital to contribute meaningfully towards the transformation of the nation.