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3,958 students graduate from ATU
Skills development in Vocational and Technical Training has been identified as the panacea for transforming Ghana’s industrialisation and curb unemployment.
In view of this technical universities have been urged to improve the relevance of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system to equip the youth and adults with skills required for employment, entrepreneurship and lifelong leaving.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Professional Studies, Accra, UPSA, Prof Abednego Feehi Okoe Amartey who was speaking on the topic, Technical and Vocational Training for employment and job creation, at the 21st Congregation of Accra Technical University (ATU) on Saturday, April 23, 2022, said since strategic business- university research collaborations provided a myriad of benefits to their participants, policy makers should put in place pragmatic policies to ensure that industry and universities did not run parallel.
The Vice-Chancellor of ATU, Prof Samuel Nii Odai, said a total of 3,109 students graduated from the university with Higher National Diploma, (HND) Diploma (Dip) and Certificates on Saturday, while 849 Bachelor of Technology students graduated in March this year.
He said a total of 146 students obtained First Class which represented 4.70 per cent, adding that the university had been admitting in excess of 7,000 students for the past three years.
The Vice-Chancellor said the launch of the university’s Five-Year Strategic plan under its Eight Strategic pillars in 2021 was the compass that would direct the university into the middle of the decade.
Prof S Odai said seven BTech programmes which included Accounting and Finance Analytics, Cyber Security, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Interior Design and Technology, Medical Laboratory Science, Water and Sanitation Engineering and Mechanical Engineering which have received accreditation were currently running.
He said the university’s second campus at Mpehuasem in the Ga West Municipality was now operational and has been serving students from the Faculty of Engineering for practical lessons since last year.
Prof Odai was elated to note that some students had made the university proud by winning a couple of awards, while donor agencies had also provided grants to the university over the period.
The Minister of Education Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, who was the guest of honour, tasked the university to work hard on campus recruitment and contrive ways of merging the period with the National Service of students who would be affected.
He charged the students not to underestimate the opportunity offered them to study at school, adding that the country’s capacity to transform was in their hands.
The Minister lamented that though companies were ready to recruit the right caliber of students who would exude confidence, they could not get the right people to recruit, adding that since the country’s capacity to transform laid in their way,they
Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum advised the students that though challenges and obstacles would come their way, they must try to surmount them, adding that they should not underestimate their abilities and capabilities.
“Those who are successful in life have invested a great deal in those fields, hence the need for you to do same,” he said.
He said the Free Senior High School concept was to change the face of education and that the expansion in education enrolment was to provide the opportunities to more students to be educated to enable the country to tap from their human resources.
The valedictorian Ms Abena Bondziwa Bonney asked her colleagues to take pride in themselves, have faith in what they did and make time for fun.
By Raymond Kyekye
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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A path towards healing
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
