The Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Prof. Kwasi Obiri-Danso has urged the government to support initiatives to increase the residential capacities of tertiary institutions.
Prof. Danso noted that this call was apt because of the expected increased in admissions from the first batch of students who benefited from free secondary education.
According to him, with the introduction of the free SHS policy, there should be a conscious plan to provide the corresponding infrastructure to fill the gap.
“It is important that the government supports all tertiary institutions to increase infrastructure to ensure a comfortable environment. Interestingly public universities have focused on classroom space but they engage private developers for where their students sleep. The development is not fast enough looking at the numbers that are coming in.”
Prof. Kwasi Obiri-Danso made this statement during the University Teachers Association of Ghana’s national workshop.
The workshop was held under the theme “Towards receiving the first batch of Free SHS Students into the Public Universities of Ghana: The Role of the University and the University Teacher”.
Solving accommodation challenges
In a bid to address accommodation challenges, the Management of the University of Ghana in September 2019 earmarked some of its lands for the construction of new hostel facilities to ease the school’s accommodation challenges.
Many students who were offered admission in September 2019 were left stranded as they struggled with finding accommodation on the campus or in nearby hostels.
In 2019, it offered admission to close to 11,000 students, but only 1,970-bed spaces were available in both the residential halls and the private hostels linked with the university.
