Former President Kufuor (seated left) congratulating some of the graduates
Former President John Agyekum
Kufuor has called on the government to make it possible for universities to
retain the services of teaching personnel at least at the age of 70 years as
pertained in many other countries.
“I urge the government to take a
critical look at university teachers who are retained on contract to work in
the public universities after attaining the retirement age of 60 years. These
teachers tend to be ‘la crème de la crème’ in our universities and
are mostly the ones handling postgraduate programmes and supervising PhD
students due to their experience and expertise,” he said.
Former President Kufuor who is also
the Chancellor of the University of Science and Technology (UMaT) in Tarkwa in
the Western Region made the appeal at the 11th Congregation of the university
on Saturday.
He also called on the government to
prioritize increment in the Academic Facility User fees to enable public
universities to continue to deliver on their mandate of providing quality
education.
He said for Ghana to realize the
laudable “Ghana Beyond Aid” agenda there was the need for massive
investment in the institutions to carry out quality scientific research and
training.
The investment, he indicated, would
also improve the universities’ capacity for innovation and
promote university-industry collaboration.
He praised the administrators and
staff of UMaT for working assiduously to achieve the vision of becoming the
premiere institute of technology in Africa.
He pleaded with the Board of the
Mineral Development Fund to urgently consider releasing the necessary funds to
speed up the completion of the legacy projects on campus.
A Deputy Minister of Education,
Gifty Twum Ampofo, said that the government appreciates the need for some staff
beyond the age of 65 to be retained but added that “we are advised that there
are constitutional implications of maintaining such staff on government
payroll, and that rather, they should be paid from Internally Generated Funds
(IGF).”
She added that there would have to
be a constitutional amendment to increase the age of retirement to bring such
faculty members within the constitutional framework, and that Parliament
was in the process of considering that.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof Jerry
Kuma, mentioned that the university through a series of innovative processes in
teaching had produced graduates whose quality outmatched their competitors
trained elsewhere.
In all, 494 students graduated at
various levels. Out of the number, five were awarded Doctor of Philosophy
Degrees.
Twenty-nine of them were awarded Master of Science or Master of Philosophy Degrees. Four hundred and forty-seven (447) were awarded Bachelor of Science Degrees in their respective engineering programmes.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Tarkwa
