The Council Chairman of the Bolgatanga Technical University (BTU) in the Upper East Region, Professor Francis A. Abantanga, has appealed to government to as a matter of urgency operationalise the Aviation Industry Corporation of China-built workshops and other laboratories in the various Technical Universities and Technical Institutions in the country.
The Council Chairman who commended government for the building of such giant workshops and laboratories in the Technical Universities and Technical Institutions said it was necessary for government to operationalise such facilities to realise the dreams in which they were established.
Prof. Abantanga, who made the call at the 11th graduation ceremony of the BTU at the main campus of the University at the Sumbrungu community on Saturday, said if this was done, it would help fast-track and improve quality training of the required skills for national development.
“If Technical Universities are well resourced, especially in the field of Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), and involved in the planning and engineering of national development needs, they have the ability to change the story of Mother Ghana,” Prof. Abantanga observed.
The Council Chairman equally urged Technical Universities to train, nature and develop graduates with critical thinking abilities and hands-on practical skills to address the numerous engineering and technological challenges confronting the nation.
Prof. Abantanga further impressed upon Technical Universities to redesign their curricula to address the challenges of the growing unemployment situation in the country.
Enumerating some of the challenges confronting BTU, Prof. Abantanga said the University was faced with dwindling Internal Generated Fund and attributed the problem to the low enrolment of students.
He proposed that to help address this challenge, there was the urgent need for government to introduce scholarship packages for studies in TVET in Technical Universities, and noted that “this will help improve upon the enrolment figures of students in Technical Universities in the country to overcome the low internal generated revenues of the Technical Universities”.
“This I believe will go a long way in halting the tendency of the teeming youth who travel down south only to study programmes equally offered by Bolgatanga Technical Universities. It will also bridge the gap between the over-subscribed Arts and Business Programmes and the TVET programmes,” he explained.
Prof. Abantanga challenged lecturers to take bold and definite steps to conduct research aimed at mobilising resources and responding to the current economic challenges so as to complement government efforts at addressing the economic challenges to help lecturers mitigate such economic crisis.
The Council Chairman, who said the academic programmes of the University had increased from15 to 25, entreated students of the University to use electricity judiciously to help reduce the huge payments the University usually pays to the Electricity Company of Ghana.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof. Samuel Erasmus Alnaa, congratulated the 578 graduands who obtained Bachelor of Technology degrees, Higher National Diploma and Professional Diplomas in Procurement and Logistics Management, Agriculture Engineering, Hotel, Catering and Institutional Management, Computerised Accounting, Secretaryship and Management, Marketing, Accountancy among others.
He said he was happy that out of the 98 students who obtained first class, 60 of them were females, and encouraged other female students to see their predecessors as role models and work towards obtaining same grades.
FROM SAMUEL ADADI AKAPULE, SUMBRUNGU
