WA POLY TO PRODUCE RECHAARGEABLE SOLAR LAMPS (PAGE 11, JUNE 11, 2010)

THE School of Engineering of the Wa Polytechnic will by the end of July this year produce 400 pieces of rechargeable solar lamps which will be sold at a token fee to communities in the Upper West Region.
Known as Socialites, the lamp is assembled with local raw materials such as empty plastic bottles and is manufactured by lecturers and students of the department with technical support from the Cooper Union, an engineering institution based in the United States of America (USA).
Speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic, after the opening of the third annual research conference of the Wa Polytechnic, the acting Rector of the polytechnic, Mr Solomon Dansieh, said the project commenced last year under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Cooper Union and the Wa Polytechnic.
He said the Cooper Union went further to assist the polytechnic to set up a laboratory known as the Socialite Engineering and Technology Centre, which he said was the first enterprise in the envisioned technology park of the polytechnic.
So far, Mr Dansieh said, 62 of the lamps, which he described as simple, robust and affordable, had been assembled and distributed to communities in the Jirapa District including Baazing, Nambeg and Tampaala.
On the research conference, the acting rector noted that in line with the strategic plan of the Wa Polytechnic to initiate action programmes and enhance and promote training, research and innovation, it instituted the annual research conference dubbed Wa PARC, as a forum for staff of the polytechnic to present their research findings, seek inputs from the audience, as well as update them for publication.
Sixteen papers will be presented at the three-day conference, which is on the theme: “Mobilisation of relevant skills for national development: The role of Ghanaian Polytechnics”.
He expressed appreciation to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) and the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) for their enormous support to the polytechnic and the conference.
He, however, appealed to the NTCE to review upwards the annual allocation of the faculty development and research fund to sustain its conferences and further appealed to organisations in the informal sector to come and invest in the development of the Wa Polytechnic technology park.
In a presentation on the topic: “Developing Ghana through sustainable engineering,” a lecturer of the School of Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof. Sampson Agodzo, deplored the level of corruption that had permeated the engineering profession in the country.
He attributed the poor engineering services being rendered in the country to incompetence and corruption on the part of engineers, saying “In this country everybody runs to where something good would happen. The procurement law which is also expected to deal with corruption is rather worsening the corruption situation,” he added.
Prof. Agodzo, who is the immediate past Rector of the Wa Polytechnic, said the non-existence of a law to regulate engineering practice in the country was the basis for the challenges confronting the profession over the years.
He, therefore, called for the passage of an engineering bill to streamline engineering practice in the country.
Touching on the influx of foreign students into the country’s educational institutions, Prof. Agodzo stressed the need for the expansion of infrastructure and service delivery among other facilities in the country’s educational institutions to be able to reap the desired benefits.