The Obuasi East District Assembly has partnered CRISSPAN company, an Obuasi-based construction firm to construct a three-Storey hostel facility for students of the Obuasi campus of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST-Obuasi)

The 1,080-bed capacity hostel is expected to address accommodation challenges facing students when it is completed within 24 months.

Established in 2019, the KNUST-Obuasi Campus, which is the first public tertiary institution in Obuasi, has been grappling with accommodation challenges as nearly 3,000 students struggle to find decent accommodation.

Currently, students are making do with available hostel facilities provided by the school and private individuals, which are woefully inadequate for the increasing student population.

It is based on this background that the Obuasi East District Assembly is taking steps to salvage the situation by partnering CRISSPAN to construct a new hostel facility under a Public Private Partnership arrangement.

At the sod-cutting ceremony for the first phase of the project, which would provide accommodation for 432 students, Madam Faustina Ammisah, the District Chief Executive (DCE), said the initiative was aimed at finding a lasting solution for the accommodation challenges confronting the school.

“We had to look around to see the appropriate remedies out there.

Key to this was the unavailability of land so we decided to pull down some old, dilapidated bungalows which AngloGold Ashanti relinquished to the Assembly some time ago,” she observed.

She was optimistic that the completion of the project would create room for more students to be admitted.

Prof. Lawrence Darkwa, the Coordinating Dean of KNUST-Obuasi Campus, welcomed the project which he said would address a key challenge facing the university.

He said efforts were ongoing to make the Obuasi Campus a fully-fledged University, hence the need to upgrade facilities in the school.

He also spoke about the need to improve teacher-student ratio in the University and called on the government to give financial clearance for more lecturers to be recruited.

Nana Serwaa Bruwaa II, Queen Mother of Akrokerri Traditional Area, commended the Assembly for initiating such a laudable project to sustainably address the accommodation needs of the university.

“I am particularly excited about this project and see it as a step in the right direction because the Assembly has put the land into good use for the benefit of the district,” she stated.

She was upbeat about the prospects of the University, stressing that it would contribute to improving the local economy of Obuasi and offer the youth of Obuasi and Adansi quality tertiary education.