A NATIONAL stakeholders’ consultative conference will soon be convened to brainstorm on how to re-position the polytechnics into the country’s overall human resource and development agenda.
Vice-President John Mahama, who announced this at the 10th congregation of the Takoradi Polytechnic, stressed that the conference would clarify and define the role of polytechnics as skills-centred institutions.
He said the conference, to be organized by the Ministry of Education would, among other things, help put to rest the frequent agitations by the polytechnics against the seeming attempt to consign them to subservience to the universities, especially issues on enhanced emoluments.
A total of 2,318 students comprising 1,595 males and 723 females were awarded various Higher National Diplomas. The congregation also witnessed the award of competency-based training certificates to 71 students.
Concerning recent developments in the labour front in the polytechnics, Vice-President Mahama said the government appreciated their demands for better conditions of service, assuring POTAG and other unions in the polytechnics that government would show greater interest in the impasse between them and the National Labour Commission, with a view to bringing it to an amicable settlement.
Vice-President Mahama acknowledged that though financing had been a major problem facing the polytechnics, government was coming up with new programmes to enhance GETFUND financing so as to bring about the free-flow of funds to carry out projects in the polytechnics.
With the commencement of commercial production of oil in the Western Region, the Vice-President said the close proximity of Takoradi Polytechnic to the oil industry and associated investments that would take place behooves on the polytechnic to train the bulk of the human resource that the industry would require.
That, he said, would make the Local Content legislation more meaningful. “Polytechnics are mandated to equip its products with technical and employable skills to face the industrial challenges in the world of work,” he said.
He stressed that the polytechnics had the potential of producing students who would become the driving force of consolidating Ghana’s emerging status and urged poly students to “To see yourselves as agents of development who must move our country to prosperity.”
Vice-President Mahama said social interventions such as the distribution of free school uniforms to pupils was on course, saying, 80 per cent of school children had been covered. Government was also committed to addressing the school under trees phenomena with the construction of over 3,000 schools.
The Reverend Professor Daniel Nyarko, Rector of the polytechnic said the current industrial unrest in the polytechnics called for a sober reflection on the relevance of polytechnic education to the socio-economic development of Ghana.
“If we accept that Polytechnics have a key role to play in meeting the high-level manpower needs of the country, then the Polytechnic lecturer deserves better conditions of service than is currently the case.”
Rev. Nyarko said the polytechnic would sign a MoU with the University of Derby in the United Kingdom next year to mount specialized Bachelor and Master’s Degree programmes in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
“We are also poised to see our collaboration with Tullow Ghana ltd towards the training of technicians for the oil and gas operations become a reality next year.
Takoradi Polytechnic is ready to sign an Mou, next year, to begin the training of aircraft maintenance technicians with the assistance of the world-renowned Aircraft Maintenance Training Institute of Florida, United States,” he added.
The Rector said the polytechnic would soon secure accreditation from the City and Guilds of the UK to run specialized training programmes in the field of welding, fabrication, logistics, transport, freight forwarding and clearing.
Dr. George Oduro, Chairman of the Polytechnic Council stressed the need for the media to be circumspect in the way and manner it reports on issues bordering on the polytechnics labour front.
.Story: Irene Ata-Donto
18/12/10
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