By Mustapha Sesay
Pro-chancellor of University of Sierra Leone has commended the Institute of Public Administration and Management, IPAM, on its 33 years of existence on Tuesday.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the anniversary at the IPAM campus at Tower Hill, Reverend Canon Dr. Modupe Taylor-Pearce their Tower Hill said: “IPAM has done well and has a good reputation”. He urged the constituent college of the USL to accelerate to perfection.
He said “perfection consists of performing so well and working so hard that there is nothing conceivable that you could have done that you did not do.”
This, he said, meant working for “mastery and first standard class in every aspect of work”. He stated that the University of Sierra Leone was reputed to have occupied the last position among tertiary institutions in the evaluation of response to the 2012 performance contract signed between the government and the university court.
He said it was a wakeup call to every member of the university to ensure that never again would the university perform so poorly.
Celebrating on the theme “Promoting Entrepreneurship Culture through Teaching and Practice”, the acting Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences, Dr. Oludolapo Akinyosoye-Gbonda said that entrepreneurship was being pronounced as the hallmark of prosperity, which was accentuated by most development experts.
Unfortunately, she said, the greater majority of businessmen and businesswomen in Sierra Leone today continued to operate as mere traders rather than entrepreneurs. She said IPAM was created as the business arm of the University to provide the requisite training, skills, and knowledge for the country’s future entrepreneurs.
She pointed out that a trained entrepreneur from IPAM should be one full of “energy to act and the drive not to be discouraged by obstacles”, adding that students should make good use of the knowledge acquired at IPAM and “whilst you do that don’t forget to be shrewd and devious” for that was the only way they good entrepreneurs were made.
Unveiling the service charter, Minister of Education, Dr. Minkailu Bah said the charter “is part of the efforts towards quality service” and that it was also a “requirement of the performance management contract which was signed by the president and the court of the University of Sierra Leone”.
He pointed out that if the students did not receive the service which was expected they had the right to complain, noting that the service delivery charter would bring about a cordial students-administration relationship and maintain harmony on the University campuses.
He called on Fourah Bay College and the College of Medicine, Allied and Health Sciences to prominently display the service delivery charter for the information of students in the coming weeks.
© Politico 07/11/13
