The Vice Chancellor of Koforidua Technical University, Prof (Mrs) Smile Dzisi, has urged the government to speed up work on the conditions of service of Technical University lecturers to curb the phenomenon of ‘brain drain’ being recorded by the institution.
According to the Vice Chancellor, the traditional universities and industries are poaching lecturers at the technical universities, which is very detrimental to the institution.
“Our major challenge now is the conditions of service of staff members of technical universities, our salaries, our allowances and other conditions are nothing to write home about, so most of our staff members are leaving; the traditional universities and industries are poaching them. If we don’t have them in our university we don’t know how the technical universities will be able to progress for things to go on well,” Prof. Dzisi lamented.
Prof. Dzisi told the DAILY HERITAGE on the sidelines of the 13th Congregation of the university that the conditions of service in the technical universities are bad, hence the exodus of their lecturers to other places.
“So we are appealing to the government to speed up work on the conditions of service of staff members so that we will be able to maintain them and they will be happy to work with the technical universities. It is a very good concept as it is helping most developed countries; you talk about Germany, China, Austria, and also Kenya. But we need to get good conditions of service for staff members,” she stated.
A member of the Technical Universities Teachers Association told the paper that there is a huge disparity in the conditions of service of lecturers in traditional universities and technical universities, despite the possession of same academic qualification.
The total workforce of Koforidua Technical University is 633, made up 224 academic staff and 389 non-academic staff.
The university currently has 26 PhD lecturers, 51 more have enrolled on PhD programmes, while many members of staff are pursuing further studies but after the upgrade, the lecturers hardly return to the university due to poor conditions of service.
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