‘Free Vocational Education Has Come To Stay’

A DEPUTY Minister for Education in charge of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), Gifty Twum-Ampofo, has declared that government will not relent on its efforts to provide free skill, technical and vocational training to its teeming youth, as this is the surest way of guaranteeing jobs for them.

She noted that the Council for Technical Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) through Ghana TVET Voucher Project is providing the avenue for artisans, master craftsmen, those within the informal sector, school leavers including school dropouts, to take advantage of this opportunity and prepare themselves for the world of work.

According to her, trends in the global labour market indicate that personnel with skills or vocation are on high demand.

Therefore, it was important for the citizenry to position themselves properly and make good use of the Ghana TVET Voucher Project by learning and upgrading their skills to international standards to enable them have their share of the global labour market.

“Let us strive to build ourselves and add value to our skills using the Ghana TVET Voucher Project as the springboard”, she noted.

Ms. Twum-Ampofo, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa North, made these observations when addressing to a team of master craftsmen, apprentices, workers and skilled experts in academia prior to the launch of the Ghana TVET Voucher Project in Koforidua in the Eastern Region. 

Background

The Ghana TVET Project is under the Ghanaian-German Financial Development Cooperation and co-financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMW) through KfW Development Bank and the Government of Ghana.

The five-year development project is part of TVET reforms to train about 16,000 master craftsmen, apprentices and their workers in several artisanal trade.

The project with an estimated value of €22m has, since its inception in September 2017, trained over 5,000 people in eligible trade areas such as beauty and cosmetic (cosmetology), consumer electronics, automotive repair, building construction (welding) and garment/tailoring/dressmaking.

It has also added plumbing, furniture making, electric installation, block laying and tiling and catering and hospitality to the project.