Book and Research Fund prone to abuse – Prof Aryeetey

The outgoing Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ernest Aryeetey, has called on government to restructure the Book and Research Fund as the current policy is likely to be rendered useless.

According to him, if persons appointed to manage fund do not have any background in research it will not serve its purpose.

“There’s not one single person there who knows about research,” Professor Ernest Aryeetey said about the current managers of the fund.

“The fund will be in place but the research won’t get done because those managing it don’t know how to do research anyway and those going there don’t do any research anyway. So the structure of it will make it useless,” Professor Aryeetey said.

Government earlier this month released some GH¢37 million to the Controller and Accountant Generals Department (CAGD) for the payment of Book and Research allowances for the 2015/2016 academic year.

The Book and Research allowance is an annual fund disbursed by Government to lecturers of tertiary institutions for research and the acquisition of teaching materials.

Government says it will replace the Book and Research Fund with a more comprehensive National Research Fund to promote research in the country, but that is yet to happen.

Speaking at a forum in Accra, Professor Aryeetey said the current structure of the Book and Research Fund can only solve a small part of the research problem – funding for book and research.

“It is quite clear in the document that the only reason for creating the fund is to deal with the Book and Research Allowance. You are doing the right thing of having the fund in place, but for a very wrong reason of solving a small problem that can be dealt with directly,” Professor Aryeetey said.

According to him, a National Research Fund is more likely to solve bigger research funding issues, recommending that government fast tracks the process for its implementation.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | GN