President John Agyekum Kufuor on Saturday said the business friendly environment currently prevailing in the country offered opportunity for people with the requisite qualifications to get jobs and acquire the capacity to be self-employed. He therefore urged polytechnic graduates to form small consultancies and productive enterprises to be self-employed instead of looking for non-existent white collar jobs. President Kufuor said this in a speech read on his behalf at the sixth congregation of the Koforidua Polytechnic. He said Higher National Diploma (HND) courses “are hands-on career focused skill training programmes, which should easily make the graduands self-employed”. President Kufuor said what was required was to take advantage of the customers’ needs around the community adding; “that calls for ingenuity and creativity”. He said the Social Investment Fund and other sources of funding for small and medium-scale enterprises were initiatives to support the ingenious and the creative. “Under such an enabling enterprise, waiting to be called for employment interviews should be a thing of the past for a polytechnic graduand”. President Kufuor said that was why the government had been committed to polytechnic education and continued to invest a large chunk of the tax payers’ money in it. On conditions of service, he urged university and polytechnic lectures to take advantage of the Faculty Development and Research Grants from GETFund to improve upon their individual situations. He said they could also engage in consultancy services or publish scholarly articles that could accelerate their promotion with its accompanying improved condition of service. President Kufuor charged councils of the polytechnics and universities to widen the bases of their internally generated incomes to improve on the facilities in their institutions. He advised the graduands to be disciplined, adding that their behaviour at workplaces, either as employees or employers would be dictated by the level of discipline. Dr George Afrane, Rector of the Polytechnic, said since last year, their staff strength had gone up from 324 to 438, while student population had also gone from 2,500 to 3,700. He said the increase had not been matched by corresponding increases in facilities. Dr Afrane said most of the lecturers did not have offices and some of them still “operate from their cars”. He said preparations were under way for the polytechnic to run Summer Modular Programmes during the long vacation starting next year. Dr Afrane said the purpose of the programme was to bring flexibility into the academic life of students, and ultimately enhance the internally generated funds portfolio of the institution. “Under this scheme, among other benefits, a student can defer his studies for one semester, or even a whole year for financial, medical or other reasons and still be able to finish school with his classmates”. In all, the polytechnic awarded HND certificates to 700 students who successfully completed their studies in 2007 and 2008 in Accountancy, Marketing, Purchasing and Supply, Computer Science and Statistics. That brought the total number of skilled HND graduates produced by the institution since 1999 to 4,340. Source: GNA