Dr William Vidogah showing the team master plan of UHAS
Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE indicates that the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) is in distress, as both students and management are going through an ordeal of keeping the university alive.
The Vice Chancellor of UHAS, Professor John Owusu Gyapong has, therefore, appealed to the government to consider using revenue from oil and gas to invest in legacy projects like the university which has benefits for today and tomorrow’s generation.
He suggested that just as University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and University of Cape Coast benefitted from a dedicated funds supply till they became independent, UHAS and the other new public universities need the same treatment.
Professor Owusu Gyapong, therefore, stressed that “let’s make UHAS and the new universities a priority and dedicate a portion of oil revenue to it and in ten years we will have a legacy forever.”
PIAC Visit
He made the appeal when the members of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), the agency that monitors how the country’s petroleum revenue is spent, paid a visit to the university to monitor some petroleum revenue funded projects.
Also on the tour were members of the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ).
The team monitored some projects at UHAS such as the Faculty of Basic & Biomedical Sciences building, students’ hostel and staff accommodation and construction of roads and other infrastructural amenities of the university.
The prestigious university which commenced admissions in September 2012 with just about 154 students now has over 3,000 students. It is operating on both its temporary campus in the Volta Regional Hospital, Ho, and its permanent campus which is 15 minutes drive away at Green Valley, Sokode-Lokoe.
Distress
The lack of accessible roads within, leading and exiting the permanent campus, lack of accommodation for staff and students, inadequate infrastructure and inadequate government funding which is making the university indebted to many of its clients, suppliers and creditors are some of the many challenges being faced by the university.
The team observed that the road leading to the university from the Sokode-Ho highway is in a deplorable state so much that the university is spending thousands of Ghana cedis on maintenance of its vehicles. Workers and clients of the university also experience frequent breakdowns.
The roads of the university are in two folds – one is a 17km internal and ring roads of the university which is being handled by the USSUYA Ghana Limited. The other one being handled by First Sky Limited is a dual carriage bypass from the Ho-Sokode highway that will intersect a portion of the internal roads and exit at the Ho-Aflao highway, near the Volta Regional Hospital.
Deplorable Roads
Although both roads were originally earmarked to start in 2011 when the late President John Evans Attah Mills cut the sod for the university project, the portion for USSUYA eventually started in 2012 and was expected to be completed in 2014, yet only about 10 percent has been done so far. First Sky’s portion also commenced in 2015, with some study work ongoing.
Dr Thomas Stevens who is representing the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) on PIAC is worried that although about GH¢1,182,177 has been taken from the oil revenue in addition to GH¢9,255,245.76 disbursed for the project, work was still progressing sluggishly.
Expressing his dissatisfaction with the road and transportation situation, Prof Gyapong described the situation as frustrating, adding that the lack of buses and inadequate accommodation at the permanent campus has forced the university to have an arrangement with Metro Mass Transit for scheduled hourly trips to and from campus at the cost of the students.
“The Metro Mass bus (we) arranged to carry students is always overloaded though they pay for the services,” he complained.
Inadequate Accommodation
On accommodation, the team corroborated the vice chancellor’s concerns as the only students’ hostel at the permanent campus originally designed for 32 students is housing 68 students out of 3,000, while only eight-unit semi-detached two bedroom bungalows were provided as against the over 600 staff strength of the university.
The Works Director of UHAS, Dr William Vidogah, lamented that students and staff have to rent apartments in Ho and its environs and further commute several kilometres to the Sokode campus daily, thus, exerting a huge financial burden on them.
The students’ hostel and staff bungalow came with the first phase of the permanent campus project; the School of Basic & Biomedical Sciences. It was constructed by the Yanjin Group with the Chinese government through its development agency, China AID, providing about $17 million and the Ghanaian government funding of $940,000.
However, information from the Ministry of Finance shows that $7,917,441.69 (GH¢34, 262.90) was eventually committed to the project in 2014. It is unclear what warranted the increment in Ghana’s contribution.
Meanwhile, the Coordinator of PIAC, Marilyn Aniwa, told journalists that the physical verification of projects funded by oil is part of a holistic investigative process of ensuring transparency, accountability and value for money of the oil revenue disbursements.
She expressed worry that with the way UHAS is being treated, it may take forever to complete the entire master plan of the school, especially as the School of Basic & Biomedical Sciences is one out of 11 other schools of the university, not to talk of the main administration and road network.
From Fred Duodu, Ho freduoo@gmail.com