THE Takoradi Polytechnic will sign a memorandum of understanding next year, to begin the training of aircraft maintenance technicians with the assistance of the Aircraft Maintenance Training Institute of Florida, in the United States of America, the Rector of the Takoradi Polytechnic, Rev. Professor Daniel A. Nyarko has announced.
He said the polytechnic was expected to secure accreditation from the City and Guilds of the United Kingdom soon to run specialised training programmes in the fields of welding, fabrication, logistics, transport, freight forwarding and clearing, and warehousing, among others.
Rev. Prof. Nyarko said the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) through the Canadian High Commission in Ghana, was working out a similar package for the Takoradi Polytechnic.
The Rector announced this at the 10th congregation of the polytechnic in Takoradi at the weekend.
“We cherish these collaborative relationships. A lot more institutions and individuals are showing remarkable interests in Takoradi Polytechnic and are holding talks with us towards collaboration to run new programmes or assist us in human resource and infrastructural development,” he said.
In order to take advantage of the current goodwill, he said a new outfit to be known as the Office of International Programmes and External Relations would be created next year to co-ordinate all such activities.
He said plans were far advanced for the Bachelor of Technology degree to be awarded in conjunction with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Cape Coast as appropriate and that the polytechnic had been assured of affiliation by the two universities.
“Takoradi Polytechnic hoped to receive accreditation from the National Accreditation Board (NAB) to run a new Bachelor of Technology programme in Civil Engineering soon”, he assured.
For the 2010/2011 academic year, he said the institution had introduced two new programmes in printing and procurement.
The Rector noted that efforts at placing Takoradi Polytechnic on the world map of technological institutions required that academic quality assurance was given priority attention.
To this end, he said the polytechnic had strengthened itself and would continue to upgrade the capacities of its human resource at the Academic Quality Assurance Unit towards achieving efficiency and effectiveness.
In 2011 and the years ahead, he said Takoradi Polytechnic would strive to be ISO-9001 compliant in terms of its quality management system, just as it was required of all tertiary institutions in Kenya.
He explained that such rigorous academic quality assurance measures had, to a large extent, helped to eliminate the incidence of victimisation of students by lecturers and had reduced human errors too in its record-keeping.
Rev. Prof. Nyarko said a new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) software designed to manage student admissions, registration, and academic records would be installed in January 2011 to enhance its quality management system.
He expressed the polytechnic’s sincere gratitude to Tullow Ghana Limited and the Jubilee Partners for their approved initial two-year assistance for the new Mechanical and Electrical Engineering programmes about to begin.
The support, he explained, comes in the form of investment in new laboratory equipment, syllabi for process operations and instrumentation and control at the Higher National Diploma (HND) level.
He, therefore, appealed to the Ghana National Petroleum Company to help fast-track the process for the polytechnic.
Rev. Prof. Nyarko said the recent developments on the labour front in the polytechnics called for a sober reflection on the relevance of polytechnic education to the socio-economic development of the country.
“If we accept that polytechnics have a key role to play in meeting the middle and high-level manpower needs of the country, then the polytechnic lecturer deserves better conditions of service than it is currently the case,” he pointed out.
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