The Director of Special Operations at the National Security, Mr. Richard A. Jakpa, says the first STEM Senior High School in the northern part of the country under construction in the Daffiama-Bussie-Issa (DBI) District will be ready for commissioning by the end of June next year.
Mr. Jakpa made this known after he took a walk around the project site with the contractor to inspect progress of work.
“From the time I cut the sod for the commencement of the project to today I’ve seen a very fast movement of his work. He has done so much, he has done well and I’m much impressed about the quality of the work. You can really see the quality of the columns, the concrete, everything and I’m very very impressed,” he said.
According to him, he is hoping they will be able to meet the deadline so that by middle of next year, ending of June, they will be preparing to commission the school.
“His Excellency will be here God willing to commission the first STEM SHS in the northern part of the country, so we can begin to groom our young JSS students who will be coming into the SHS to become engineers, science oriented graduates for our tertiary institutions,” he stated.
Mr. Jakpa said Ghana needs to start focusing a lot on science graduates to propel the country to the next level.
“We have a lot of graduates in this country but a lot of them are human resource, humanities oriented graduates. We need to start focusing a lot on science graduates… It’s science that can help us manufacture basic things for the agro industry so that our farmers, we are in an agrarian economy, so we should be able to produce basic things for our farmers to reduce post-harvest losses. And all these things will come from engineering,” he explained.
He called for a deliberate national strategy to build one STEM SHS in each district.
“If we are able to build one STEM SHS in all the districts in the country as an objective of government, it won’t be one day but it can be ten at a time. Every year we award contract for ten, in the next twenty years or so we should be having all our districts having one STEM SHS. Then we can produce a lot of science oriented graduates that will put this country in a different level in the whole of Africa,” he said.
On challenges at the site, Mr. Jakpa said he has not seen any.
“They are working, you can see all their machines are here, they have a lot of material. That was what I was concerned about when I was coming, do they have enough material piled? More than enough to continue the work. I’ve seen that they have more than enough material piled here so which means the work will not stop. That is what makes me very happy,” he added.
By Romanus Bombe Kyi-Era
