Canadian company given the nod to resource technical, vocational centres

The Ministry of Youth and Sports on Wednesday signed an agreement with DDY International, a Canadian company which specializes in project financing, to provide technical assistance to the 11 government Technical and Vocational Training Centres spread across the country.

This is to afford the centres which are not well resourced get the requisite expert assistance and transformation to make them attractive to people interested in Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET).

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mrs. Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu, Chief Executive Officer of National Youth Authority (NYA), lauded government for the initiative as it would go a long way to "create a new face for the centres as well as TVET in the country."

She noted that the transformation of the centres formed part of government’s Better Ghana Agenda and its quest to create jobs as the 11 centres produced over 2,000 people who had received technical and vocational training.

Dr. Daniel Baffour-Awuah, Chief Executive Officer of Council for Technical and Vocational Training (COTVET), noted that the transformation of the 11 centres would curtail instances whereby people had to compete for admission into the two centres in Accra. “People usually love to come to the centres in Accra because of the perception that they offer better training as compared to those in the other regions”, he explained.

He called for the passage of the COTVET Bill into law to make it mandatory for private persons who wanted to establish technical and vocational training centres to obtain accreditation from the COTVET before doing so.

He noted that government was working to make TVET very attractive, adding that measures had now been put in place to ensure that people could obtain their doctorate degrees in technical and vocational education.

Mr. Yoram Doitch, General Manager, DDY International, said the company would commence the rebranding and resourcing the centres after it had conducted a feasibility study of all of them to know exactly what their needs were.

“Our contract with the government spans for three years and we hope to complete the feasibility studies by the end of the year, so that we can start with what we have to do to help the centres by early next year”, he noted.

Alhaji Abdulai Yakubu, Chief Director of Ministry of Youth and Sports signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on behalf of the Ministry, while Mr. Doicth signed on behalf of DDY International.