Gold Fields supports local communities

Gold Fields Ghana’s Damang Mine, through the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation, has presented tools worth over GHS15,000 to beneficiaries of the company’s Community Apprenticeship Programme (CAP).

The beneficiaries went through training to become auto mechanics, auto electricians, welders, and sprayers, and the tools were meant to help them establish their own workshops and garages, Gold Fields Ghana said in a statement.

The statement said “even though the company invests heavily in formal education, it also realises that a good number of community youth drop out after Junior High School, and are often unable to pursue further education.”

The apprenticeship programme was, thus, designed to provide an avenue for those, who wished to learn employable skills to do so.

Mr. Robert Siaw, a Sustainable Development Manager at Gold Fields Ghana, said: “The Company, together with community leaders, instituted CAP to address a real community need and open up opportunities for the youth. The problem of unemployment and under development cannot be addressed by just focusing on the formal education sector.”

“Vocational and technical training are critical for both local and national development, and we are equipping the youth with these skills so that they can find employment for themselves, become employers as well, and help address societal challenges,” Mr Siaw said.

Under the CAP, the beneficiaries are attached to experienced trade masters in Tarkwa and its environs for a four-year period.

Gold Fields Ghana bears the cost of the training and also provides transportation for the beneficiaries, to and from their various training locations. The company encourages beneficiaries to also undertake the National Vocational Training Institute certification examination and pays the examination fees for such beneficiaries. Over GHS450,000 has, so far, been spent on the programme.

Chiefs, queen mothers, parents of beneficiaries, and the head of the Garages Association of Tarkwa were present at the presentation ceremony.