The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has accused the Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, of denying the people of Sunyani the opportunity to have a medical school at the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR).
According to Nketiah, the minister purportedly argued that UENR is primarily focused on energy-related disciplines, and therefore, a medical school was not within the scope of the university's mandate.
Speaking in an interview on TV XYZ on November 28, 2023, the NDC national chairman expressed his discontent with this stance, stressing that the university had even admitted first-year medical students before the plan was canceled.
Asiedu Nketiah questioned the minister's decision, stating, "When Napo became minister, then he took a principled and intransigent stand that UENR is a university for energy, so he didn’t agree for them to build a medical school there. It got to a time where they even admitted first-year students, but because he canceled that, it didn't work."
He went on to compare the situation at UENR to other universities in the country, noting that institutions like the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University of Cape Coast (UCC) have diversified their programs beyond their original focus areas.
Nketiah raised concerns about the concentration on core business in universities, asking, "Which of the universities in Ghana is concentrating on its core business?
“Tech is about engineering, but lawyers are passing out from the school. Don't we have a political science department at Tech? Even engineering goes with a medical school.
“Cape Coast was training teachers, but now they're doing other courses, even though they have a medical school. Why is it only Sunyani?... even one of our own Kwaku Agyeman Manu was the health minister but he couldn't do anything for us,” he added.
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