KNUST impasse: Old members will be good for new Council – Jantuah

Energy expert and Vice Chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee Kwame Jantuah has called for the inclusion of old members of the KNUST Council on the new one.

According to him, the old council members will come to the job with institutional memory and history of affairs regarding the university.

“I think if we have old members on the council it will help. Because they have institutional memory which will help. I was not happy with how the Minister of Information came out to say the position of government has not changed,” he told Morning Starr host Francis Abban Friday.

Government and labour unions at the school have been at loggerheads over the composition of the council, a development that thwarted the November 8 reopening plan.

The Government has announced that it will not allow old representatives of the dissolved governing council to join the yet to be re-constituted governing council of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, (KNUST).

According to government, the old council is a party to the impasse that took place on the school’s campus.

Speaking at a press conference Monday, Minster for Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the Government is also not interested in deciding with specific individuals that they nominate.

“So the specific persons who constituted that old council cannot therefore preside in our opinion over the matters in which their own decisions and conduct will be a subject. It is in this spirit that government and some other groups have already indicated new nominees,” he said.

The Minister added “it is important to ensure that a council that is put in place has the freedom of hand et cetera to superintend that exercise. The principle of specific persons who will end up becoming judges in their own course is what government disagrees with. It’s precisely to resolve this disagreement that the chancellor is taking leadership in engaging with the various nominated groups.”

“And we are looking forward that we can have a quick resolutions to this matter once all the parties cooperate with us and we have those new names,” he noted.

However, groups like the University Teachers Association of Ghana and the Teachers and Educational Workers Union, both KNUST Chapter, have insisted on nominating their old members unto the new council.