Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has commissioned facilities and vehicles amounting to over $131m to further boost Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET).
The facilities included a state-of-the-art TVET Service headquarters as well as the Applied Technology Institute, which contains classroom blocks, ICT centres, administration blocks, workshops, male and female dormitories, and installation of workshop equipment.
Vice President Bawumia also distributed to the TVET Service 37 buses, 21 double cabin pickups, 2 tractors, 3 Toyota Fortuners and 1 Toyota V8 Landcruiser, in addition to 26 Computer Based Training occupational standards developed in the various trade areas.
Speaking at the commissioning and handing over ceremony at the TVET headquarters in Accra on Tuesday, Vice President Bawumia said, the facilities represent the biggest investment in TVET education in the history of the country, adding that the facilities and vehicles have come as a huge relief to all stakeholders in TVET.
“The overall expenditure for this project amounts to USD 131,657,198 and this has been one of the largest investments in the TVET landscape in Ghana.
“The completion of this project has brought a sigh of relief to the management of Ghana TVET Service, the beneficiary institutions, students and the general public.”
Tuesday’s commissioning and distribution of the over $131m facilities and vehicles in Accra, adds to the massive investments, the Akufo-Addo government has made in promoting TVET education in the past five years, including construction of the First Phase of 32 State-of-the Art TVET centers in all 16 regions of the country, which the Vice President cut the sod in Abrankese, Kumasi for its commencement.
Commitment to TVET education
Vice President Bawumia noted that all these facilities and projects are manifestations of the commitment of the Government of President Akufo-Addo towards TVET education, which was prioritised in 2017 after the Akufo-Addo government took office.
“At the beginning of this administration in 2017, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had a vision to align all TVET institutions in the country, to provide appropriate governance and management structure for a unified national TVET system”, Dr. Bawumia added.
He said government realigned the TVET landscape to provide coordination of the curriculum, training of trainers/facilitators, linkage with industry, entry requirement, training facilities, mode of delivery, assessment, certification system and employability of graduates, by synchronizing all existing laws relating to skills training in the country.
“In pursuit of this noble objective, I, on behalf of the President launched the Ghana TVET Service last year at a colourful event at the Accra Technical Training Centre. I am proud to see the many noticeable successes chalked by the management of the Ghana TVET Service, one of which we are here to witness today,” the Vice President said.
Reiterating the Akufo-Addo government’s commitment to investing more in TVET education, which is free, Dr. Bawumia added that TVET is important to government’s industrialization drive and its effort to reduce growing youth unemployment.
“The government of President Akufo-Addo has been on this progressively steady path of bringing technical and vocational education to the front burner of our educational strata because the provision of technical and vocational education and training is the panacea to mounting unemployment among the teeming Ghanaian youth”, he said.
“It is against this background that we need to have balanced skills demand and supply in our educational system, especially in our part of the globe. To give credence to our commitment, Government signed a contract with Planet One Group – for the upgrading and modernization of the vocational education system in Ghana.
“Several other initiatives have been taken by government in giving greater emphasis and impetus to the TVET education system in Ghana, including the establishment of a TVET commission.
“All in all, these efforts and initiatives have yielded some remarkable results unparalled in the history of this country”, he reiterated.
Dr. Bawumia named other interventions the government has made in the TVET sector in the past six years as: the upgrading and modernization of all the erstwhile 34 National Vocational and Technical Institutes (NVTI), upgrading and modernization of Head Offices together with 10 Regional Offices, upgrading and modernization of 5 apprenticeship offices across the country.
The rest are the upgrading and modernization of the Opportunity Industrialization Center in Accra, comprising the construction, rehabilitation and equipping of laboratories, workshops, additional classrooms, hostels, administrative blocks, two (2) new foundries and machining centers – one in CSIR (Accra) and the other at KNUST, Kumasi.
New projects
In addition, the Vice President revealed that new workshops (computer, electrical, electronic, building construction, mechanical);
rehabilitation of buildings in two (2) Technical institutes (Abetifi and Don Bosco) and four (4) Senior High Technical Schools (Kyebi SHTS, Dagbon State SHTS, St. Georges SHTS and GSTS), ongoing construction of five new District TVET centers of excellence at Anyinam and Pakyi No. 2 (near completion) while that of Assin Jakai in Central Region, Akomadan and Manso Abore in Ashanti Region will start soon.
Completed technical institutions
The government, Dr. Bawumia said, has also completed and inaugurated the rehabilitation of 10 Technical Universities and 13 Technical Institutes, which include construction of new workshops/laboratories and supply and installation of equipment fit for disciplines in electrical and electronics engineering, welding technology, automotive maintenance, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering.
