Vocational institute trains more women

Gomoa-Panfokrom(C/R), Dec. 17, GNA- The Panfokrom Women's Training Institute in the Central Region is to train 450 unskilled young girls and women from five districts in the region in various vocations annually, under the STEP programme.

They are, Agona, Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam, Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa, Awutu-Effutu-Senya and Gomoa.

Madam Rebecca Ampah-Korsah, Headmistress of the Institute told The Ghana News Agency in an interview at Gomoa-Panfokrom on Wednesday, that due to inadequate classrooms and dormitories, the programme could not take off in September, last year as expected. She said, until the new dormitory and classroom blocks currently under construction at the institute were completed, the institute cannot implement the STEP programme.

Mad. Ampah-Korsah said since the programme was introduced a year ago, hundreds of unskilled young girls, particularly school drop-outs, and middle-aged women who want to take advantage of the STEP programme to learn dressmaking, hairdressing, catering and home management, had been trooping to the institute to register, only to be told that things were not ripe for the programme to take off there.

Mad. Ampah-Korsah has therefore appealed to District Chief Executives of the five administrative areas who are direct beneficiaries of the Panfokrom STEP programme to collaborate efforts to complete the new dormitory and the classroom blocks without any further delay. She said management and teachers of the institute were prepared to give of their best to ensure absolute success of the STEP programme in the area.

Mad. Ampah-Korsh further called on the Central Government to offer the institute adequate funds for the total rehabilitation of the old classrooms and the construction of an assembly hall for the institute. She said even though the Panfokrom Women's Training Institute was the First Women's Training Institute in the country, it cannot boast of better educational structures, let alone an assembly hall.