Huge infrastructure and staff deficits affecting university’s development – Vice Chancellor

The huge Infrastructure development deficit and the inadequate staffing gaps are affecting the progressive development of the University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS).

There are three lecture halls, a hostel, and a library projects under construction at the university, and work on them are being executed at a slow pace for the past years, the Vice Chancellor of UBIDS, Professor Emmanuel K. Derbile lamented.

He said apart from the library project, which had appeared to have had some serious work carried out on it, very little work had been done on the others; either the contractors had abandoned the projects or work was being implemented at a snail-pace to the disappointment of the university authorities.

He said the challenge regarding the slow pace of work on the projects had to do with the non-payment of certificates raised by the contractor after some work had been done on the projects.

Professor Derbile raised these concerns during an interaction with the Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Stephen Yakubu, who was on a working visit to the university to learn of their problems, especially in the area of projects under construction at the campus.

On the deficit of staff, he said the University was given a quota to employ 100 staff but there was also a condition attached, which gave a window opportunity for staff who wanted to go on transfer from the university to either Tamale or Navrongo were allowed to do so.

He said that gave way for about 60 staff to go on transfers to the two sister universities in Tamale and Navrongo while UBIDS had to do with 50 staff instead of the 100 staff required.

The Vice Chancellor also raised a concern about the streetlights on campus, which bills had been metered to be paid from the internal generated funds and needed to be separated from university light bills.

He said road infrastructure at the University was very poor as it had only one tarred road resulting in lecturers and students getting their cars and other vehicles stuck in the mud at the campus especially during the rainy season.

Professor Derbile pleaded with the regional coordinating council to liaise with Urban and Feeder Roads to come to the aid of the university, while efforts were also made to establish a Police Post and Ghana Fire Service Station to render security services and manage fire disasters in the campus and the surrounding communities.

He appealed to the Ghana Health Service to assign a medical doctor and nurses to man the University’s Health Centre and upgrade it to full-fledged hospital to provide quality health services to the university community.

Mr Yakubu assured the university authorities of his readiness to meet with the contractors and officials of GetFund to address the non-payment of certificates raised by the contractors.

He said issues of infrastructure had been a worry being expressed in most of the universities and urged the University authorities to sign a memorandum of understanding with private business entities to come and help in providing hostel and other facilities for the university to address the inadequate infrastructure challenges.

He advised the authorities to extend relations with neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and others, to attract students from those countries to come and do programmes at the university to help raise its internally generated funds for development projects

Source: GNA

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