Education Minister wants ongoing projects completed before new ones

Mr Lee Ocran, Minister of Education, has said he would prefer that educational infrastructural projects initiated across the country are completed before new ones would be awarded.

However, he said, new projects evaluated to be dire should be started and this should include teachers’ accommodation in certain deprived areas and in critical situations.

Mr Ocran said this while inspecting some uncompleted projects at the Ho Polytechnic after addressing the institution’s 12th Congregation in Ho, on behalf of Vice President John Mahama.

He said it would serve the country better if the many projects were finished and put to use with the contractors paid before new ones were taken on.

Mr Ocran said his Ministry was currently taking stock of all such projects across the country for the necessary action.

The uncompleted projects at the Ho Polytechnic include a five-storey 20 flats -staff accommodation and another five-storey art and design faculty complex. They are GETfund funded projects said to be behind the scheduled period of completion.

Mr Ocran said the Government had planned a programme to refurbish laboratories of educational institutions, including the polytechnics.

A total of 1,244 students graduated with degrees and diplomas, 17 of them with first class.

Vice-President Mahama whose speech was read by Mr Ocran lauded polytechnic education as vital for the growth of the country.

Mr Mahama observed that the competency-based module of training at the polytechnics should make products functional and prepared to be good employees and employers.

He urged industry to participate in the formulation of syllabuses for the courses and also help in practical training of the students.

Dr Victor Jakpasu Afun, the Rector, said the polytechnic was finding it hard to attract, recruit, and retain the needed staff.

He pleaded that the current melee over the salaries of polytechnic lecturers be settled quickly to enable them to call off their industrial action.

Dr Afun stressed that one cannot belie the assertion that technical brains represent hands that craft a nation.

He said the polytechnic needed more facilities and machinery because the existing ones were decrepit.

Dr Afun also appealed for a sports complex for the polytechnic.

Professor Anthony Adimado, Ho Polytechnic Council Chairman, said courses were increasingly becoming market driven to make products self-starters.

He urged the polytechnic community to show more interest in research work and have the findings published to make bigger impact on society.**