Stick to your core mandate - Ntim Fordjour charges Technical Universities

The Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, has tasked Governing Councils of Technical Universities in the country to stick to their core mandate of spearheading the development of technical education.

He explained that to attain that, there was the need for them to maintain the high intake of science and technology-based courses as their main focus and not the current situation whereby some had a huge intake of humanities than the science and technical courses.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour made the call on Monday when he launched a five-year strategic plan for the Accra Technical University.

The 66- paged Strategic Plan (2021-2025) is centred on eight pillars namely: quality and motivated human resource and effective governance, availability of approved infrastructure and systems, internalization and the visibility of the university, industry and community engagement.

The rest of the pillars are impact-oriented research and innovation, enhancing students' experience, finance and staff welfare and support services.

It is expected that the full and strict compliance of the 5-year strategic plan would help push the fortunes and performance of Accra Technical University forward.

The Deputy Minister lauded the 14-member strategic planning committee for their hard work leading to the completion of the new plan.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour was quick to mention that, "do everything possible to ensure that you implement this strategic plan and do not let it be left on the shelf to gather dust".

He then charged various stakeholders in the school to play their roles effectively to ensure that the implementation brought about massive improvement and transformation in the operations of the University.

The Deputy Minister recounted how some Technical Universities were admitting high numbers in the humanities instead of science and technology which was their main focus.

He stated that the huge investment made by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government in the past five years in the Technical Education Sector attested to the interest he had in turning the nation's economy around through industrialization.

Again, he said, "to catch up with the rest of the world in the 4th industrial revolution, there was the need for the training of critical thinking and other skills needed to support the development of industry" .

The Vice-Chancellor for the Accra Technical University, Prof. Samuel Nii Odai, was upbeat that with the launching of the strategic plan, everything possible would be done to ensure that it attained higher laurels for the University and the country.

He appealed to all stakeholders in the institution to support the governing council so that they would be able to spearhead the development agenda of the University.

The Chief Executive Officer for Databank Group, Mr Kojo Addae Mensah, charged the University to consider looking for other alternative sources of funding and not depend solely on government support.

He proposed an increase in the number of fee-paying students which currently stood at about five per cent to about 20 per cent to raise enough cash to support their new strategic plan and other development initiatives of the University.