VRA opens bids for the construction of hostel

Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - Volta River Authority (VRA) on Thursday opened bids for the construction of its hostel for training and development centre to be cited at Akuse. Twenty-one companies presented bids for the project, which involves the construction of a one-storey 25-bedroom hostel with porters' lodge, lounge, reading room, pantry, and associated landscaped area and external works.

Only one company gave three per cent unconditional discounts. The bid price as posted at the opening ranged between 1.2 billion cedis and two billion cedis. In a speech read on behalf of Mr Gilbert Ohene-Dokyi, Chief Executive of the VRA, he said an organisation's ability to cope with the changing business environment depends on "the availability of the right employees with right kinds of knowledge, skills and attitudes in right numbers at the right time."

He said in response to these new challenges, the VRA has initiated actions to strengthen its institutional arrangements for human resource development activities. These include the establishment of a training and development centre and development of an in-house human resource capability for the organisation of training programmes.

Mr Ohene-Dokyi said these initiatives need to be supported with appropriate physical infrastructure such as the provision of classrooms, workshops and trainees'/participants' residential accommodation.

He said although VRA has classroom and workshop facilities to cope with the present demand, it does not have residential facilities dedicated solely for staff in training. This has placed serious limitation on the number of staff that could be trained at a particular time.

He said it is their hope that on completion of the project the department would be able to intensify the authority's staff training and development activities and to organise more programmes to meet the needs of staff, especially the large number of staff, who live outside Akuse and Akosombo area.