Ajumako-Bisease health centre to become a district hospital

Ajumako-Bisease (C/R), Aug. 5, GNA - The health centre at Ajumako-Bisease is to be developed into a hospital to serve communities in the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam District, the Central Regional Minister, Isaac Edumadze has said.

He said two medical doctors would be posted to the area to enhance health care delivery there, as part of the upgrading process. Mr Edumadze was addressing a durbar to climax the celebration of the annual 'Abangye' festival of the chiefs and people of Ajumako-Bisease at the weekend.

He urged the people to support the District Chief Executive's efforts to step up socio-economic development in the area. The Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Captain Nkrabea Effah Dartey (rtd), asked the people to show more support to the government and the substructures of local governance, by meeting their tax obligations promptly.

Nana Okofo Kwakora Gyan IV, Adontehene of the Ajumako Traditional Area, said the people of Bisease were undertaking some development projects, including the construction of a library and a community centre.

He appealed to the government and the media to help attract investment to the area, which, he said, had resources like silicon and kaolin.

Experts blame industrial deficiencies on non-utilization of research results

Ho, Aug 5, GNA - Professor Godfried Komla Adanu, Head of Physics Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, on Monday blamed the country's industrial and technological deficiencies on the failure of policy makers to utilize the numerous research and scientific findings to advantage.

He, therefore, called for the institution of a national body of scientists, technologists and economists to harmonise and harness the industrial potentials towards a cost effective and rapid development. Prof Adanu was delivering a lecture on: "Development of Post-Independence Ghana: The Role of Science Education," at the Reverend Trost Memorial Lectures, which formed part of the 53rd Honours Day celebration of Mawuli School at Ho.

He described the deficiency as "another missed chance for innovation power and industrial development".

He bemoaned the country's over-dependence on the importation of foreign industrial technology, saying it accounted for the non-performance of the sector. "It is because we failed to fully exploit the technology transfer agreement accompanying such industrial machinery".

Prof Adanu noted that several other industries, which hitherto were operated on simple technology, had undergone divestiture and could not be salvaged because "the right things were not being done".

For instance, the two defunct sugar factories at Komenda and Asutsuare, respectively, should not have folded up because the process of crushing and extracting sugar from the juice "did not need any complicated problems in quantum mechanics and interplanetary motion", he said.

"The lesson here is that, we have not transferred the technology of sugar extraction into the country; we only had sugar factories installed", Prof Adanu said.

He said the transfer of technology lies in the ability of the importing country to understand the operation of the equipment otherwise it would become a liability.

Prof Adanu lauded the institution of the Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (STME) clinics for girls but said measures must be put in place to accommodate and sustain it at all levels of the educational ladder.

He noted that it would have been a disincentive to produce graduates and "let them lie fallow, while we look elsewhere". During an open forum, most of the tutors and students blamed scientists for their inability to develop the country's natural resources especially the sunshine, farm produce and simple technologies.