By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, Dec 06, GNA – A nine-member Sector Advisory Board (SAB) for the Regional Water and Environmental Sanitation Centre, Kumasi, (RWESCK) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has been inaugurated in Accra.
The new RWESCK’s Board is under the chairmanship of Madam Cecilia Abena Dapaah, the Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources.
Other members include Professor Sampson Oduro-Kwarteng, Director, RWESCK; Mr Worlanyo K. Siabi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Community Water and Sanitation Agency; Dr Clifford A. Braimah, Managing Director, Ghana Water Company Limited and Mr Ramesh Bhusal, Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) – Ghana.
The rest are Mr Ben Ampomah, Executive Secretary, Water Resources Commission; Madam Ama Allene Ofori-Antwi, Executive Secretary, Environmental Sanitation Providers Association; Dr Henry Brew, Business Developer, Here to Grow (H2G) and Dr Pascal Bieupoude, Business Developer, BPL, Project Experts.
The role of the SAB Board will include reviewing the Centre’s research innovations and development plan, knowledge transfer, patents and business start-ups.
Others are providing strategic advice on innovation for the Centre to develop niche areas and approving the implementation plan and annual action plans of the Centre.
Madam Dapaah in her inaugural address, advised her fellow Board members to pursue teamwork.
She said WASH sector was an honorius responsibility that seems very old and yet very new; stating that it was because new threats and current events were showing them that there was more to be done.
She mentioned climate change, population growth and rural-urban migration, as some of the challenges facing the sector.
“So, we need everybody on board. What I want us to do is to work as a team,” the Minister said.
RWESCK started in 1998 as a project to strengthen higher education in water supply and environmental sanitation with funding from the Netherlands Government.
It expanded in 2004 under phase two of the project entitled ‘Water Resources and Environmental Sanitation’ to offer two master programmes.
RWESCK is under the Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) project with funding from the World Bank supporting Ghana Government to scale-up higher education and research in water and sanitation.
Programmes being run by the Centre include MSc in Water Resources Engineering and Management, MSc in Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation, PhD in Water Resources Management, PHD in Water Supply and Treatment Technology and PhD in Environmental Sanitation and Waste Management.
Prof Oduro-Kwarteng said the RWESCK’s core mandate was to strengthen postgraduate education, professional training and develop innovations in water resource, water supply and environmental sanitation.
He said the Centre envisions being a recognised hub for advancing new knowledge, innovations and high-quality training in water resource, water supply and environmental sanitation for sustainable development of the West Africa sub-region.
He said the strategic objectives include providing high quality postgraduate education and delivering professional training in water and environmental sanitation in the sub-region.
Others are conducting cutting-edge research into innovations in five key thematic areas in water and environmental sanitation; and to nurture high caliber early-career researchers.
On students’ enrolment, Prof Oduro-Kwarteng said under Africa Centre of Excellence programme, the Centre was able to admit 56 PhD students, of which 10 had already graduated and the rest were at various stages of completion.
He said they had trained 166 MSc students in Water Resources and Sanitation, and in addition the Centre had conducted short courses for 640 participants.
Prof Samuel Nii Odai, a former Director, RWESCK, who gave historical perspectives of the Centre, said RWESCK seeks to build high quality human resource capacity in Ghana and the West Africa sub-region to meet the needed critical mass of human resources required to address the water and sanitation development challenges in the sub-region.
Mr Siabi on behalf of his colleague SAB Members lauded the Centre for the confidence reposed in them.
He noted that they would combine their knowledge and expertise to address the challenges facing the WASH sector in the country.
GNA
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS