Wa, June 10, GNA - The Wa Polytechnic in the Upper West Region has began assembling simple, robust and affordable solar rechargeable lamps using local raw materials.

The lamps are being assembled through the technical support of students in partnership with staff of the Cooper Union, a US company. Currently the solar lamps are being used in places such as Baazing, Nambeg and Tampaala communities in the Jirapa District of the Region. Mr Solomon Dansieh, Acting Rector of the Polytechnic, who announced this at the third Annual Research Conference of the institute on Wednesday, said the Cooper Union had also assisted the Polytechnic to establish Socialite Engineering and Training Centre as part of its Technology Park project.

The conference instituted in 2007 and dubbed: "WaPARK", provided platform for faculty and administrative staff to present their research findings, to seek inputs from colleagues and to refine them for publication. Research papers to be presented at the conference include "Re-engineering Ghana's Urban Transport System towards Sustainability", "Evaluation of Structures and Methods for storing Cowpea and Mapping of Black Spots in the Wa Municipality." Mr Dansieh through the National Council for Tertiary Education, appealed to the managers of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to support the Faculty Development and Research Fund to ensure sustainability of research as well as to support important conferences like "WaPARK" and the Biennial Ghana Polytechnics Research Conference. He invited the informal sector to invest in the Polytechnic's Technology Park where research findings could be shared and implemented to ensure a healthy collaboration between the formal and informal sectors for national development.

Professor Sampson Agodzo of the College of Engineering of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), who presented a paper on "developing Ghana through sustainable engineering practices", called for the passage of the Engineering Bill to give legal backing to engineering practice in the country. Professor Agodzo, who is also the immediate past Rector of the Polytechnic, said engineering practice should target the most productive sectors of the economy such as cocoa, mining, tourism and petroleum.