Polytechnics' Woes Worsen

VARSITIES POACHING THEIR LECTURERS?

The Principal of the Sunyani Polytechnic, Dr Kwasi Nsiah-Gyabaah, has been speaking about a new dimension to the brain drain phenomenon in the country, related to the internal brain drain.

“The new twist to the internal brain drain has to do with qualified lecturers of the polytechnics drifting to the universities for permanent teaching jobs,” he said.

Dr Nsiah-Gyabaah, who was speaking at Sunyani at the ninth matriculation ceremony of the Sunyani Polytechnic, therefore, appealed to the Government to mandate the chairmen of polytechnic councils to begin negotiations on salaries, allowances and general condition of service of the unionized staff of the country's polytechnics.

He said if the Government wanted the polytechnics to be what it claimed they must be then conditions of service of polytechnic staff must be improved to bring to an end the brain drain.

Stressing the importance of negotiations, the principal observed that separate negotiations for the various unions in the polytechnics had not only been expensive and time consuming but also failed to address the serious distortions in salaries and allowances of staff of various categories in the polytechnics.

The principal pointed out that in Ghana, “Our lip-service attitude and the inadequate attention we have given to the technical, vocational and polytechnic education have seriously undermined the Socio-Economic development of the country and eroded the gains of many government development initiatives.”

Dr Nsiah-Gyabaa, therefore, appealed to government to consider turning either Twene Amanfo or Nkoranza secondary technical Schools into a fully fledged technical school or establish a new technical school for the region.