Professor Samuel Innocent Ampadu, President of the Ghana Institute of Engineers, has urged his colleague engineers to take up the challenge of helping to efficiently manage the country’s industrial waste.

He said they should use their expertise and skills to also provide technical solution to the sanitation problems, find alternative sources of energy and safe water and improve food production and processing.

Prof. Ampadu, who is the Provost of the College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), said they should additionally focus on developing the technology for effective running of the oil and gas industry.

He was addressing the 46th congregation of the college in Kumasi on Friday.

In all, 576 students graduated, 54 of them were awarded first class honours.

Prof. Ampadu noted that engineering was one of the flagship programmes run by the university and appealed to the university council to do more to develop all aspects of the engineering programmes to appreciable level.

The college should be strengthened to provide quality tuition to enable its products to spearhead the nation’s development.

He commended the University for its recent Research Engineering Retreat that offered the opportunity for senior members to share research findings and deepen relationship with industry.

Mr. Sam Eshun, Corporate Affairs Manager of Schlumberger, a supply chain management firm in the oil industry, said acquisition of knowledge was critical to the fight against poverty.

He appealed to KNUST to work hard to bridge what he termed “the academia-industry gap”, which he said, had been a major problem impeding the progress of some developing countries as many graduates are unable to put into practice the knowledge acquired.