Cabinet has approved the conversion of the Institute of Local Government Studies into a full-fledged university to be called University of Local Governance and Development, the Minister of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, has disclosed.
To this end, the drafting of a Bill to give the school a charter to award its own certificates is underway for onward presentation to Parliament for consideration, he said.
Mr Korsah, who is also MP, Techiman South, made this revelation in Accra on Friday when he inspected expansion works of the Institute in readiness for the conversion, scheduled for November this year.
At 60 per cent complete, the expansion works, include four 400-bed hostels, a 1,200 seater multi-purpose auditorium, a new administration block, an astroturf, lecture halls, a library, and the upgrade of existing facilities to prop the institute up for the university status and the expected increased intake.
The Institute is currently an affiliate of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and offers academic programmes, including certificates, bachelors and masters degrees in Local Governance, Development Management and Environmental Management.
Briefing the media after inspecting progress of work on the facilities, Mr Korsah said the elevation of the institute into a university would produce the requisite human resource personnel to manage the local governance space.
“The President has approved the setup of this university when I made the request to government and in in the process of introducing a bill to parliament to finalise it. We hope that even before we get the parliamentary approval, the structures would have been completed.
“So we are hoping that this school will improve the human resource needs of our local governance system and it will be my greatest pleasure to commission this project, which is the first of a kind,” Mr Korsah said.
Local governance, he acknowledged was the live wire for Ghana’s holistic development, and needed to be given the maximum attention including a deliberate plan to develop its human resource base for the country.
“Local governance employs about 40,000 people in our local government spaces, that tells you the strength of local governance and how essential it is in Ghana,” the Minister noted.
He said there was the need to ensure adequate human resource development and periodic training to improve their capacity to be able to give up their best.
Mr Korsah said he was hopeful the institute would not serve only Ghana, but other neighbouring African countries.
“I will not be surprised that we get people coming from other neighbouring countries to come and enroll to better themselves in local governance,” he said, and charged the contractors to ensure work was done within the agreed timelines.
Registrar of the institute, David Osei-Wusu, said upon completion, the school’s intake would expand from the current 800 to 3,000 students
“By the close of this year, we anticipate that when this full edifice is commissioned, the institute will award its own diploma and degree certificates,” he said.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
