The Research Staff Association (RSA) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Wednesday called on government to reappraise its decision to transfer the technology sub-sector to the Communications Ministry saying it is inappropriate and would not serve the interest of the country.
"We as practitioners of the sciences and generators of the wide range of relevant technologies find the apparent singling out of information technology and therefore removing the technology sub-sector from the science ministry very strange," they said.
A statement signed by Dr. A.D. Agyei, National President of the RSA, said government should return the technology sub-sector to the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology where it originally belonged.
This would enhance coordination of all scientific research and technology application and help in the development of an effective national research system.
The statement said the government's interest in bridging the digital divide and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) was surely in the country's interest but the approach taken was wrong.
It said the two words, Science and Technology, found together everywhere had not been by chance because the basis of the generation of all technologies together with information and communications technology was the science behind them.
"We cannot pretend that most of our woes would be solved by making available ICT gadgets everywhere and making everybody computer literate."
It said for Ghana to take advantage of the information super highway and the development of the Internet in all the rural and urban communities, training programmes on ICT, which should be directed to developing the needed manpower, must be put in place.
