The Parliamentary Select Committee on Education is urging parents across the country to prioritise Technical Vocational Education & Training (TVET) for their children, as it presents more self-employment career opportunities.
According to the Committee’s leadership, recent statistics have shown that job opportunities are very limited on the African continent – making it difficult for graduates to find jobs, and more so for people without any technical or vocational skills.
Chairman of the Committee, Kwabena Amankwah Asiamah, stressed that students who are trained in technical institutions have the knowledge and technical know-how to create jobs on their own compared to their colleagues on the other side.
To buttress his point, he cited countries such as Germany, China, Hong Kong and Singapore which have been able to develop because of their high concentration on technical institutions that made it possible to have a great chunk of their human resources technically inclined.
He added that the days when parents wanted their children to read courses and choose careers that would put them in banks and offices should be in the past, as with the right technical skills they stand to create their own jobs which can make them more prosperous and offer them opportunity to live their dream-lifestyles.
He made these remarks during a working tour by the 20-member Education Committee to inspect TVET projects in the Western Region. The exercise is part of the Select Committee’s oversight responsibility as the legislative arm of government to check whether the loans and financial agreements approved by Parliament for government agencies are being used appropriately.
Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, Ranking Member of the Education Committee, on his part commended government for the investment being made in the TVET space. However, he observed that even though government is supporting technical education it is still not enough compared to the current needs of citizens in the country’s 16 regions.
He further pointed out a need for the TVET facilities to be made more user-friendly to people with disability.
In the Western Region, the Committee visited project sites such as the Takoradi Technical University and Takoradi Vocational Training Institute. In the Central Region, projects inspected included the Gracelove Creations Training Institute at Winneba and Biriwa Vocational Training Institute.
Acting Director-General-TVET Commission, Dr. Fred Kyei Asamoah, was with the team and expressed his heartfelt gratitude for the Committee’s projects inspection, stating that the exercise is very important because it helps to check some of the investment government has put into TVET.
The Committee members made various observations on the projects they visited, and made some recommendations – among which is directing contractors of some projects to vary the project to include access roads to the project, since current contract does not factor-in the road component.
Notwithstanding the few challenges and concerns raised by members of the Education Select Committee, they were elated to hear some of the institutions’ management outline exponential growth recorded as a result of facility upgrade projects executed by government in recent times.
