From Naabenyin Joojo Amissah
The alumni of the Cape Coast Polytechnic, which strongly kicked against the decision of the National Committee for Tertiary Education (NCTE) not to include the Cape Coast Polytechnic among the first to be converted into technical universities, is now heaving a great sigh of relief.
This comes in the wake of the NCTE’s final agreement to the alumni’s’ request that it re-assess the school to ascertain whether it has effected the necessary changes the assessment team had earlier recommended.
In view of this, a five-member technical team, on Monday April 4, visited the school to undertake the assessment to determine its fate, as far as the conversion exercise is concerned. Information available to The Chronicle indicates that the team continued and completed the assessment on Tuesday, April 5.
In an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, the National Alumni Secretary of Cape Coast Polytechnic, Mr. Richmond Yeboah, hinted that the decision of the NCTE to finally re-assess the school was welcome news.
“It is refreshing, because that was what we called for. We believe that once the process is a continuous one, there wasn’t any justification to leave us out when we had rectified the weaknesses the team pointed out in July last year,” Mr. Yeboah posited. The Secretary, who led the alumni to demonstrate against the NCTE for not considering the polytechnic in the first phase, however, said he was optimistic the school will pass the second assessment.
“We must pass the assessment. We were told earlier that the pass mark was 12. That is 75%. The work done so far puts C. Poly among the top 4 polytechnics in Ghana. Under no circumstance will we accept anything other than the inclusion of C. Poly to the first phase of this process,” he concluded.
It would be recalled that on Monday, March 15, this year, the alumni, at a press conference, alleged that the Cape Coast Polytechnic, which was ranked 6th in the country and therefore qualified to be among the first six polytechnics to be converted into technical universities, had been rejected and replaced with the Ho Polytechnic.
However, the NCTE, in response to the allegation, stated emphatically that the whole conversion process so far had been done in a fair and transparent manner. It added that there was no room for an individual or group of individuals based on political or regional consideration to influence the national agenda and vision of President John Dramani Mahama.
It is against the back and forth tussle between the alumni of the school, stakeholders, the student body, and the Coalition of Fantse Youth, as well as others on one side, and the NCTE and Ministry of Education on the other, that has necessitated the re-assessment to finally determine the case and put all agitations to rest.
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