Vice President Kwesi Amissah Arthur has called on the private sector to partner government in the delivery of infrastructure projects.
He said in recent times, the government has been constrained by resources in undertaking projects, adding that it was crucial to involve the private sector.
Vice President Amissah Arthur made the call at a ground-breaking ceremony for the start of work on a 1000-bed student’s hostel and four new academic buildings for the Colleges of Humanities, Education, Basic and Applied Sciences and Health Sciences of the University of Ghana.
The 64-million-dollar project which is a 25-year, Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) followed an agreement signed between the University of Ghana and Africa Integras earlier this year.
The project, which is expected to be completed by September 2017, will benefit from the support of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation alongside Africa Integras and its funding consortium, including US publicly listed investors.
Vice President Amissah Arthur also stated that government would continue to encourage the public sector to adopt the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach to deliver infrastructural projects.
He charged the public tertiary institutions to come out with innovative ways of delivering infrastructural projects, adding “the universities must be more revolutionary in a country such as ours.
He said there had been lot of problems getting people to change from the old ways of doing things to embrace new ideas, and that in the past government was not constrained with resources and was easier to undertake such projects.
Professor Ernest Aryeetey, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, said the PPP investment with Africa Integras to construct four new academic buildings, and 1,000 bed student hostel on the Legon campus was a good idea.
He said the construction of the four academic buildings would provide expanded facilities for the College of Humanities, College of Education, College of Basic and Applied Sciences, and the Institute of Technology and Applied Science; as well as a new facility for the College of Health Sciences to be located near the new teaching hospital.
Prof. Aryeetey said the 1,000-bed student hostel would be divided among under-graduate and graduate students of the College of Health Sciences.
He stated that the project when completed, would allow the university to realize its long-term vision to create capacity to welcome more graduate and PhD students within Ghana and from across the continent, by providing modern, world class teaching and research facilities to support them.
Prof Aryeetey said the new structure would also allow the University to alleviate internal congestion in the use of its existing facilities, such that it could expand its undergraduate population as well as welcome more distance learning students.
He said “it is projected that over the course of the BOT period alone, tens of thousands of additional teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers as well as other critical skilled professions, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, will be trained as a direct result of these expanded facilities.”
It is also expected that these modern facilities will attract millions of cedis in research funding elevating UG even higher as a premier research institution on the continent.
