Accra Polytechnic organises workshop for senior staff

The Accra Polytechnic, as part of its preparations towards the technical universities take-off in September, has organised a workshop for its senior academic staff.

The two-day workshop was to orient the staff as part of their preparations towards the transition into a technical university.

The Government’s policy of converting polytechnics into technical universities is to help re-position them as strategic institutions for the training of highly-skilled human resource to drive the nation’s socio-economic development.

The Act establishing the technical universities indicates that technical universities are not to become “traditional” universities with similar mandates or duplicate the courses and programmes that the universities are offering.

Professor Sylvester Achio, the Rector of Accra Polytechnic, speaking on Wednesday at the workshop at Dodowa in the Dangme West District, said a series of similar workshops had been held for the various categories of their staff and students to adequately prepare them for the technical university take-off.

He urged the staff to pursue team work and re-orient their mindset towards the take-off to enhance productivity of the institution.

Prof. Achio said as Accra Polytechnic attained the technical university status, there would be time-line plans to upgrade the staff.

He said at the moment 98 per cent of academic staff of Accra Polytechnic had at least a second degree which is the minimum requirement for a technical university.

Prof. Achio said for the technical universities to be able to deliver on their mandates, government subvention needed to be re-looked so that those institutions would be adequately equipped.

He said the technical universities also had to find ways and means of equipping themselves through donors, internally generated fund or whatever means to augment government’s subvention in meeting their goals.

Professor Stephen Adei, the former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, lauded Accra Polytechnic on its conversion to a university.

He said it was high time government gave priority to the funding of polytechnics in the country since they were responsible for the training of the nation’s middle level manpower needs.

Prof Adei bemoaned the unfair salary disparities between polytechnic lecturers and those in the universities, which according to him, needed to be addressed by the Government.

“Ghana has failed to invest in the technical as compared to the outside world. If not for the private sector which holds 80 percent of the technical, Ghana will be sinking,” he said.

He said the conversion of Accra Polytechnic into a technical university provided an opportunity for its staff to do something different adding; “I believe this is an opportunity for a change of mindset and a new set of professionalism”.