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Professor Emmanuel Ohene-Afoakwa, President, GTUC, said the donation aims at cushioning the economic burdens of the students occasioned by the shutting down of the institution due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
The relief items include bags of rice, tubers of yams, cooking oil, tomato paste, bottled mineral water, spaghetti, facemasks and alcohol based hand sanitizers.
The items forms part of the first batch of donation to be made by the GTUC from an amount of GH¢100,000.00, which had been set aside by Management to provide support to international students, who are currently in resident on campus and some needy Ghanaians students who are at home.
“As an institution, GTUC, prides itself in the fact that; the little that we have, we have to be able to share and at least make sure that everybody is able to learn in a good academic environment,” Prof Ohene-Afoakwa said during the donation over the weekend in Accra.
He said as a result of the Presidential Directive announcing the mandatory shutdown of all schools and universities in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all GTUC’s Ghanaian students quickly went home.
He said of the over four hundred international students, over three hundred of them are still resident on the campus.
He said the international students, who were still on campus, wanted to participate in the University College’s online learning programme.
He said this is because of the reason that when they (the students) go home, they probably would not get access to the internet or good internet facility to be able to continue learning online.
The GTUC, presently in 2020, has over nine thousand students with over four hundred international students.
“So, most of the international students are here and we know that these are difficult times,” Prof Ohene-Afoakwa said.
“So, in as much as we are a self-financing institution – we don’t get support from Government and as a result of that we have certain challenges; it doesn’t necessarily mean that we should close our eyes to the challenges that our international students, who are still in resident are facing”.
He said the Management and the Office of the Dean of Students and the Students Representative Council (SRC) came together and brought up an idea that they need to provide some support to their international students, who were in residence and also some of their local students who were in need.
“We know that we can’t feed them in all but at least this is just a token of our appreciation for the fact that they have chosen to study with us at GTUC and also continue to learn even in these challenging times. We are very confident that it will go a long way to help them as well.
And we encourage them to also encourage others to also come and study with us.”
Prof Ohene-Afoakwa extended his appreciation to Government, the President and Parliament for the GTUC, which was now going to be named as the Ghana Communications Technology University, to be added to the Public Universities’ Bill.
“We are very happy and grateful to the President and then to the Government for this inclusion, and we know that once the Public Universities’ Bill is passed, automatically, Ghana Communications Technology University will become fully fledged public university and then we will begin to received support from the Government.”
Mr Joel Koume, President, GTUC International Students Association, expressed his gratitude to Management for the kind gesture.
Dr Michael Nana Owusu-Akomeah, Dean of Student Affairs, GTUC, appealed to benevolent individuals and organisations, and corporate entities to donate towards the good cause that the University had started.
Madam Pamela Aboagyewaa Mantey, SRC President, GTUC, extended her appreciation to the University’s Management for coming out to support them.
