Participants at a day’s training workshop on gender have called on health authorities to grant paternity leave to male workers. According to them, the leave would afford husbands to spend enough time with their spouses and new-born babies. They underlined that husbands would also be able to experience many of the great moments in the early stages of their children’s lives. The participants made the call during an interaction session at a workshop on the theme “Gender Sensitive Ethical Practice in Healthcare Delivery”. It was organised by the Centre for Gender Advocacy Research and Documentation (CEGRAD) in conjunction with the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the University of Cape Coast for health workers and managers at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital. The participants also called for extension of maternity leave from three to six months for mothers. That, the participants noted, would help nursing mothers to exclusively breast feed their babies and take good care of them. Making a contribution, the former Director of CEGRAD, Prof. Akua Britwum, said fathers have the responsibility to take care of their children and, therefore, needed time out of their work to be with their babies. She chided employers who use pregnancy and childbearing as labour market penalty to deny competent women employment. Consequently, she urged all women to support the campaign for paternity leave. “So let me tell you , my sisters, we have to support paternity leave for just this selfish reason”, she said, in reference to the labour market penalty used by some employers to deny women jobs. She announced that CEGRAD was jointly working with a Spanish institution to research on family friendly benefits, which include paternity leave. Topics treated at the workshop included Gender Sensitive Ethical Practice in Healthcare Delivery, Health Sector Gender Policy, Strategies for Gender Sensitive Programme Reforms and Practices and Introduction to basic concepts in Gender.

The Centre for Coastal Management (CCM) in conjunction with the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences is holding an intensive training course on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for selected officials from some government agencies, Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC). GIS is a computer system built to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage and display all kinds of spatial or geographical data. The five-day training programme is aimed at building the capacity of participants on GIS and the need to improve sustainable development of coastal environment. Some of the topics to be treated at the workshop are Introduction to GIS, Developing Effective GIS Teams, Global Positioning System, Effective GIS Leadership and Communication. Giving an overview of the USAID/UCC Fisheries and Coastal Management Capacity Building Support Project, the Director of the Centre, Prof. Denis Aheto, noted that the project was to support government to achieve its middle-income development goals of poverty reduction, food security, sustainable fisheries management and coastal biodiversity conservation. He said CCM has been providing capacity building, research, and extension in coastal and fisheries management beyond the confines of the University. Annually, he said, CCM, through the support of USAID, trains personnel in areas as coastal governance, marine affairs, fisheries management, amongst others. The Director of CCM used the opportunity to introduce participants to FishCoMGhana, a platform which provides information on relevant data through the internet to support fisheries and coastal resource management and research in Ghana. He explained that FishCoMGhana serves as a one-stop shop for accessing historical data rescued from various sources and also contains social and scientific information, including new field observations and experimental results on inland, marine and coastal fisheries, as well as other resources in Ghana. He said as part of measures to curb the menace of dissertation malpractices among students, all the public universities have agreed to put all theses by their students on the online platform. That, he pointed out, would reduce the incidence where students go to other institutions to copy the works of their colleagues and present them to their supervisors as the originators of the works. In his opening remarks, the Dean of the School of Biological Sciences, Prof. Justice K. Sarfo, urged participants to make good use of the knowledge they would acquire during the week-long workshop to transform operations at their workplaces. The Head of the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Dr. Noble Asare, stressed the need for officials of the MMDAs to keep data for future development of their assemblies.

A team of researchers from the College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences has expressed the University’s commitment to partner government to produce the requisite sugarcane for processing at the Komenda Sugar Factory. The research team led by Dr. Aaron T. Asare of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, through a pilot studies used rapid technology to develop the planting materials to produce a variety of sugarcane with very high level of sucrose and brix (the main products for the production of sugar) at the University’s Experimental Field. Addressing the press on campus, Dr. Asare said the sucrose and brix levels of the UCC sugarcane of 15-23 per cent was far above the minimum for industrial production adding “the University of Cape Coast has the research expertise to put together a short-medium and long term research plan for execution in collaboration with other stakeholders to enable the Komenda Sugar Factory operate”. He observed that lack of adequate research and planning contributed to the closure of the Komenda Sugar Factory few days after its inauguration in May 2016. Dr. Asare also noted that the team had come up with innovative irrigation module that could be harnessed to process water from River Pra and the sea to facilitate sustainable production of sugarcane in farms around the Komenda catchment area. He refuted suggestions that Ghana could not produce the right variety of sugarcane by pointing out that “sugarcane is a tropical crop and Ghana is a tropical country and, therefore, we have the requisite soil and climate factors for sugarcane cultivation”. In line with the government’s one district one factory policy, Dr. Asare said the University needed government’s definite policy and commitment to link research to industry at all levels for sustainable running of the current Komenda Sugar Factory. He therefore made a passionate appeal for “government commitment, financial support and release of land for use”. Giving the background of the work of the team, the Dean of the School of Physical Sciences, Prof. David K. Essumang, said the University constituted a team of researchers to bring out ideas that would contribute to the effective running of the Komenda Sugar Factory prior to its inauguration in 2016. He said after interacting with the managers of the factory, the team focused their work on developing the requisite varieties of sugarcane for the production of sugar; identifying cost effective irrigation technology and managing soil fertility. Prof. Essumang said the press conference was aimed at showcasing what the research group of the University has done concerning the Komenda Sugar Factory noting that “It is feasible if we use local research, we can run the factory.” Present at the press conference were the Provost of the College of Agriculture and Prof. Livingstone K. Sam Amoah, Dean School of Biological Sciences, Prof. Justice K. Sarfo and some lecturers from the College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences.