The Ministry of Education has denied claims by the Minority that the government is attempting to relocate the campus of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development from Donkorkrom to Bunso, near Kyebi in the Akyem Abuakwa district of the Eastern region.
According to the ministry, the claim that the Act establishing the university had decreed the campus to be at Donkorkrom and Somanya is untrue.
Minority Spokesperson Education had in a statement accused the government of deliberately moving the campus to Bunso for unknown reasons. Member of Parliament for Abuakwa South Samuel Atta Akyea, who is currently House and Housing minister, is on record to have protested the citing of the campus at Somanya and Donkorkrom arguing Akyem Abuakwa was more suitable for the project.
However, in a statement signed by the Education Minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh, the government said minority is misleading Ghanaians on the issue.
“In its handover notes during the transition following the 2016 election, the previous government did not mention Donkorkrom as a prospective site, clearly because there had been no agreement to site a university campus there. Indeed, on page 22 of the said handing over notes, it is stated thus;
“Following the enactment of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development Act 2015(Act 898) Parliament has approved a loan facility of Forty-Five Million Five Hundred and Seventy-Five Thousand Euros (€45,575,000.00) for the establishment of the proposed University of Somanya in the Eastern Region. It is to be expected that as Deputy Minister in charge of Tertiary Education under the previous government, Hon. Ablakwa knows or ought to know these facts. The University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UEDS), like all public projects, is a national one. It is therefore unfortunate that Hon. Ablakwa seeks to put on a partisan cap and attempts to cause disaffection for this government in certain parts of this country.
“The Ministry of Education wishes to state unequivocally that Hon. Ablakwa’s claim that an agreement had been reached to set up the university with Donkorkrom as one of its campuses and that government has reneged on it by relocating it to Bunso is completely false, preposterous and without merit,” the statement said.
Reacting to the claim, Ablakwa told Morning Starr host Francis Abban Thursday that the Education Minister is not being honest with Ghanaians.
“With the decision being taken, I can say there is a clear violation of the Law. The Ministry of Education is not being honest. To tell us Bunso was the choice of Korea Exim is something I can’t understand. If government wants to make changes and build the University in Bunso, then they’ll have to come to parliament and the necessary changes made. If the government fails to rescind its decision or make the necessary amendments, then we may proceed to court”.
Source: Ghana/StarrFMonline.com/103.5FM
