KNUST Develops Two Vehicles

The College of Mechanical Engineering of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has broken new grounds in the field of science and technology with the manufacture of two vehicles.

The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof Kwesi Andam, who made this known to the Daily Graphic, said the two vehicles were currently in operation.

He said the vehicles had not been given any brand name because they were not in large quantity.

The Vice Chancellor said the college had a long-term plan to manufacture buses and tractors for mass transportation and agricultural services respectively. Recently, three lecturers of the university introduced a fufu-pounding machine that took them about 14 years to manufacture.

Prof Andam said the task of manufacturing the vehicles was not beyond the university's capacity and called for support from industrialists to make that ambition a reality. He said the KNUST was poised to take science and technology to where they belonged in the country.

To this end, he said the university had put in place a plan to turn out 50,000 graduates by 2010 to meet the country's manpower requirement in science and technology.

Prof Andam said at the moment, enrolment at the university was 18,000, adding that last year, the university admitted 1,700 students above its ceiling.

He said the university was seeking to modernise its laboratory and equipment and had secured a $3-million loan to establish a communications-engineering laboratory to train students in telecommunications.

The hi-tech laboratory, which was scheduled to be completed in February this year, will be the first of its kind in Africa.

The Vice Chancellor said there were some challenges ahead but expressed optimism that the university would surmount them.

He appealed for partnerships from industrial establishments to support the projects of the university.