Government to put in place proper management systems to solve accommodation challenges in universities
Government to complete abandoned structures in public universities. The Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has indicated that the government is working to solve accommodation challenges in various
public universities across the country. According to him, through GETFund, the government is looking forward to having a proper management system in place for students to reduce the challenges of accommodation.
“…I will work with the universities to look at the best way forward in terms of ensuring that we have proper management in place so that students don’t have to go to campuses on the first day of school opening to look for spaces manually. The good news is that I haven’t heard of any student who could not attend KNUST or any other university for that matter because there was no accommodation. I also understand the frustration of parents if
they had to go there and physically be present before they can find accommodation for their wards,” he said while speaking in parliament. Reacting to a statement on the high cost of accommodation in tertiary schools, the Minister said the government is also making efforts to complete some abandoned structures to complement efforts of the private sector through GETFund. “…The challenge that we confront today must end. Some funding has been made available for example our colleges of education of over 400 million allocated to them to make hostels. Now we are moving on to the public universities to help complete some buildings that have been there for years.
We are looking at ways where we can complement the efforts of the private sector, sometimes through credit enhancement, through the support of GETFund so that these facilities will be completed to remove some of these challenges our parents may go through during the first week of opening of school,” he added.
In recent years, accommodation in public universities has become a major issue for first-year students.
Some students have been compelled to defer their admissions due to lack of accommodation or the costs of privately-owned accommodation facilities. Even though the University of Ghana is running the in-out-out-in system which provides accommodation to only freshmen and final year students, the issue of accommodation is still a challenge due to the high numbers of students who enrol in the universities.

Source : Ghanaweb