2,000 laptops lying waste at Science Ministry

About 2,000 computers are lying idle in the stores of the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Bernice Adiku Heloo, former Deputy Sector Minister revealed on Tuesday. She said the Government must adopt a coordinated approach for the distribution of computers to students for the conduct of research. “How are we going to strengthen the study of science in our development agenda if such a huge number of laptops are being kept in the stores of the Ministry, when students need them for research and their studies” the former Deputy Minister asked. In a contribution to the debate on the 2019 Budget and Economic Policy of the Government on Tuesday, the former Deputy Minister, who is also the MP for Hohoe Constituency in the Volta Region, observed that the budget statement had deficiencies on policy issues on science, and the Ministry also lacked co-ordination in some of its science programmes.

Dr Heloo, called on the Government to promote the study of science through scholarships and grants to students pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programmes in Ghana. However, Mr Kennedy Kwasi Kankam, a Member of the Environment, Science and Technology select Committee, explained that the said laptops were imported into the country by the previous Government, and that the laptops did not have programmes and memory on them. Mr Kankam further debunked a position from Mr Ebenezer Okletey Terlabi, MP for Lower Manya Krobo Constituency in the Eastern Region, who in a contribution to the debate on the budget, said there had been lack of coordination between the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and other related Ministries on imports, citing the import of some chemicals in the recent past. Mr Kankam alerted the House that the MOFA needs a certificate of clearance from the Environmental Protection Agency before such imports would be allowed into the country. Mr Terlabi also called on the Government to establish an Inter-Ministerial Council to coordinate the activities of all the Ministries and fashion out a policy to mainstream science and technology, preservation and conservation of biodiversity into national economic policy. Additionally, Mr Terlarbi appealed to Government to bring back to site the contractor working on the uncompleted road and school building project in the constituency to complete the job. GNA