The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has outdoored the headquarters of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training(TVET) and vehicles worth $131m to enhance TVET education.
These facilities include 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 in addition to 26 Computer Based Trainining occupational standards developed in the various trade areas.
The Vice President also commissioned vehicles including 37 buses, 21 double cabin pickups, 2 tractors, 3 Toyota Fortuners and 1 Toyota V8 Land cruiser.
At the commissioning of the TVET headquarters in Accra on Tuesday, June 7, Dr Bawumia said the facilities are the biggest investment in TVET education in the history of Ghana, adding that the facilities and vehicles will become a 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,” said Dr. Bawumia.
The Vice Presidents again noted that all these facilities and projects indicates the commitment of the Government of President Akufo-Addo towards TVET education, 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” said Dr. Bawumia.
According to him, in pursuit of the TVET objectives the government reformed 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.
Additionally, he noted that Akufo-Addo government’s commitment to investing more in TVET education 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 explained.
Reiterating the Akuffo- Addo government interventions made in the TVET sector in the past six years, he named: 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, and 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 and A signed contract with Planet One Group – for the upgrading and modernization of the vocational education .
The Vice President disclosed 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 soon commence.
He also said the government has also completed and inaugurated the rehabilitation of ten (10) Technical Universities and thirteen (13) Technical Institutes, which includes 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.
Dr. Bawumia noted that all these efforts and initiatives towards TVET education by the government have yielded remarkable results unparalled in the history of this country.
