Tamale, Dec. 15, GNA - The Ministry of Energy would soon propose an amendment to the building code to make space for the erection of solar panels on the roofs of houses to make it possible to provide solar lighting in homes.

The Ministry is also putting in place measures to connect communities that are far away from the national grid to use solar power for their electricity needs.

Dr. Kwabena Donkor, the Deputy Minister of Energy, said this when he inaugurated a solar photovtaic equipment for training and testing at the Tamale Polytechnic on Monday.

The solar photovoltaic equipment training programme is a three-year project being funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) at the cost of 1.5 million dollars.

The programme started on a pilot basis with trainer of trainers' workshops at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Koforidu and Tamale polytechnics. Dr. Donkor said the Ministry was putting in measures to facilitate the construction of solar panels in the country and that teachers in rural communities would soon enjoy solar power to make their work and stay in the rural areas comfortable.

The Deputy Minister expressed concern about the direction of Polytechnic education and said measures should be taken to reverse the trend and make the institutions to stick to their core mandate of training students for the middle level manpower needs of the country. He noted that polytechnics that were established essentially to train students in science based subjects and engineering had now diverted into offering business and catering courses.

He said Polytechnics should be geared at addressing the challenges of science and technology to mitigate the harshness of the environment and improve upon agriculture and not driven to make profit. Dr. Donkor said the threat of climate change could best be addressed by the application of science and technology and added that it was in this connection that the government was committed to developing alternative energy sources for the country.

Mr. Kunio Asai, the JICA PV expert, said the programme was aimed at the human resource development for the dissemination of photovoltaic systems in the country.