Rev. Professor Emmanuel Adow Obeng, President of the Presbyterian University College, Ghana has reminded technical universities to remain glued to their original mandate to produce the needed skilled technical and professional human resource for sustainable development.
He was speaking at the 19th Congregation of the Ho Technical University (HTU) at the weekend.
Rev. Prof. Obeng who was the guest speaker pointed out that technical universities were established to provide higher education in engineering, science and technology-based disciplines, technical and vocational education training, applied arts and related disciplines.
The argument over whether they were at par with the traditional universities or not was, therefore, baseless, he insisted.
Rev. Prof. Obeng touched on governance issues and said that there was the need for governing councils and managements and the technical universities to institute management-training programmes within their institutions, and also encourage and financially support key officers to attend training seminars and workshops.
“The governing council and management of technical universities have to make it a priority to build the capacity of the staff and attract new staff especially academic staff, with the requisite academic qualifications and industry experience,” he added.
Professor Ben Q. Honyenuga, acting Vice Chancellor re-affirmed HTU’s firm stance to break the barriers of language by running its programmes in English and French.
He said that the university was collaborating with other institutions in Togo, Benin and Cote D’Ivoire to realise that objective sooner than later.
In all, 1,290 graduands were awarded Bachelor of Technology degrees and Higher National Diploma.
Professor Honyenuga urged them to remain good ambassadors of HTU.
FROM ALBERTO MARIO NORETTI, HO
