Management of the University of Ghana has asked parents whose wards have gained admission into the institution to brace themselves up to pay more if they want the perennial accommodation challenges witnessed in the institution to be resolved.
In a media engagement, the University’s head of halls, Dr. Wiafe Akenteng lamented the relatively low fees being charged for accommodation in the traditional halls.
He intimated that the university per the trajectory would not be able to gather enough funds to start new projects on campus.
Dr. Wiafe Akenteng thus wants parents to collaborate with the school by agreeing to pay more in order for excess funds to be channeled into building new halls.
“Let’s take the new Vikings building that is Sarbah, I'm told that two in a room is GHC7,000 and they were oversubscribed. Sometimes you ask students to pay more, you ask parents to pay more and it becomes like we are going on an 'aluta'. I think if we continue to pay this GHC510 per semester for traditional halls, we are not going to make much progress. So my appeal is that inasmuch as we all understand that our pockets are not enough [and] since education is important, we need to concentrate on that and be willing to pay more so that existing facilities could be not only improved and enhanced, but probably it will help build new ones,” he said.
As a temporary measure, however, Dr. Wiafe Akenteng said the University has acquired 400 beds in privately owned facilities to accommodate students.
“We have off-campus accommodation within a certain radius or meters…we have about 12kilometers of the University of Ghana. We put an advert and we have a number of facility owners who applied and our PDMSD [Physical Development Office] went over to inspect and look at the location, facility, security…so we have close to 400 beds from that…that’s the initial thing that we did and those will be made available on the Legon website by tomorrow. It is not going to be like the application we have done for on-campus rooms. But this one you go there and check…they have the photograph, location, rent and any other information you will need to make a decision,” he stated.
The University of Ghana has been battling with an accommodation crisis in every admission year. Some newly admitted students were seen on campus last week roaming about in search of accommodation as the ones provided on the University’s website were taken just minutes after the residential application portal was opened.
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