In view of insufficient inflows into its coffers, the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) is to raise funds on the open market to give it the needed financial muscle to complete all abandoned infrastructure projects it is funding, Mr. Yaw Osafo Maafo- Senior Minister has said.
There are many uncompleted GETFund projects dotted across the country, and the Senior Minister believes that GETFund – in its current state – lacks the capacity to complete them; hence the need for it to resort to the capital market.
Per the GETFund Act, 2.5% of VAT collections must be transferred to the Fund on annual basis. Other sources of inflows into the Fund include monies approved by Parliament, contributions, grants and investment proceeds. However, the Fund has been challenged with insufficiency to meet its demands.
“We are aware that a number of attempts to get GETFund to prioritise some educational infrastructure projects have not materialised yet due to budgetary constraints. Indeed, government is not oblivious to the challenges. What we need now is to fix the challenges, and I can assure you of government’s resolve to do exactly that,” Mr. Osafo Maafo said at the 3rd congregation of the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) in Sunyani.
He pointed out that as government makes efforts to provide resources for funding the needs of tertiary institutions, it is also fair that the leadership and management of universities make judicious use of internally generated funds.
Government acknowledges universities as critical partners in development, and to this end the Senior Minister said government intends to increase its spending on research to enable the universities and research institutions undertake more research work to generate knowledge and turn it into wealth.
He advised specialised universities like UENR not to ‘widely deviate’ from their core mandate -especially if they are science and engineering-based universities – to train the critical manpower required for the energy and natural resources sectors.
“I urge the university management not to be easily drawn into the juicy humanity programmes which can be safely mounted due to the lower unit cost of running such programmes as compared with that of science and engineering.”
The Vice Chancellor of UENR, Prof. Harrison Dapaah, said the university has a received US$1.2million DANIDA research grant to undertake research in and around Lake Bosomtwi. The project, dubbed ‘RELAB’, is linked to resilience to climate change and consistent with the UN Millennium Development goals on environmental, sustainability, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger as well as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Prof. Dapaah mentioned a number of challenges retarding progress of the University, including an acute infrastructure deficit in lecture halls, laboratories and residential accommodation for staff.
Inadequate ICT infrastructure/fibre-optic cabling of its three campuses to ensure consistent high-speed Internet connectivity also remains a challenge.
The CEO of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Dr. Kofi Kodua Sarpong who was the guest-speaker, advised the graduates to make themselves useful to society. He urged them to understand their immediate world in order to get a better understanding of the broader society for their survival and others.
Dr. Sarpong entreated them to demonstrate honesty, humility, hard work and humanity as life values and principles to enhance their progress in life. In all, 876 students passed out with various first degrees and post-graduate degrees.