Parliament Committee on Education Visits TVET Centers
BY Daniel Bampoe
THE Parliamentary Select Committee for Education has commenced a five-day working tour to inspects ongoing Technical and Vocational Educational Training (TVET) projects around the country to assess the progress and report back to the house.
The team is being led by the Deputy Minister of Education In charge of TVET, Gifty Twum Ampofo also the committee chairman, also Member of Parliament for Fanteakwa North, Amankwa Asiamah commenced the tour from Accra and is currently in the Western Region where they inspected the TVET centres at the Takoradi Technical University.
In Accra, the Committee visited a new campus for the Accra Technical University at Mpehuasem (Samsam) which was inaugurated in 2018 and is currently being restocked with new tools and equipment under the Ghana China Project on the Rehabilitation and Upgrading of Equipment in Technical Universities and Institutes.
The Committee also visited the Ashaiman Technical Institute where there is a newly constructed workshop with state-of-the-art tools and equipment under the same project.
Furthermore, the team visited the NVTI headquarters and the Construction Machinery VTO both at East Legon where there is ongoing construction work under the project overall the upgrade and modernization of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system in Ghana which commenced in 2019.
It would be recalled that in 2018, whilst speaking at the centenary celebrations of Asuansi Technical Institute, in Asuansi in the Central Region, President Akufo-Addo said it is the goal of his government to make Ghana a world-class centre for skills development, and a leading country in technical and vocational education training (TVET) delivery in Africa.
He further outlined Government’s strategic policy on Technical and Vocational Education and Training and stated: “We want to emphasize the importance of TVET, and redeem the misconception that technical and vocational education is inferior and patronized only by less endowed students.”
This promise has informed governments ‘resolve to invest over $ 700 million US Dollars since 2017.
During the tour at some of the centres, there were clear indications that the government is upgrading anmodernizingng all National Vocational Training Institutes (NVTIs) and Opportunity Industrialisation Centres (OIC).
Also, the government is constructing three foundries and machining centres, work on which is ongoing, as well as work includes upgrading of 17 Technical and Vocational Institutes across the country and building an office complex to support the unit responsible for TVET examination.
Additional infrastructural equipment is also being provided at all technical universities to achieve quality delivery at the tertiary level with industry 4.0 standards.
The committee will be visiting the Central, Ashanti, and Eastern Region this week.
BY Daniel Bampoe