Commit more resources to TVET - students appeal to government

Students of technical and vocational institutions in the Eastern Region have made a passionate appeal to the government to commit adequate funding to Technical, Vocational Education Training (TVET) in the country.

They said since TVET courses were generally more expensive to pursue than other courses in the Senior High Schools, the government should give priority to financing the teaching and learning of technical and vocational training.

“We therefore appeal to the government to go beyond absorbing only the tuition fees at public TVET schools to also cover the cost of training materials of students,” they said.

The students made the appeal in a communiqué they issued during the Eastern Regional TVET seminar organised by the International Child Development Programme (ICDP) in partnership with Plan International Ghana in Koforidua last Thursday.

The event was held on the theme: “Empowering the Girl Child, the Role of TVET”, brought together about 150 students from the Hyundai-KOICA Technical Institute, Liberty Special Institute, and Universal Schools among others to dialogue with stakeholders in the TVET on how to empower the girl child through TVET.

Reading the communiqué on behalf of TVET students, Ms Elizabeth Ofori, a second year electrical student of the Hyundai KOICA Technical Institute at Koforidua, said the dwindling nature of enrolment figures in TVET institutions could be blamed on inadequate financing of TVET institutions.

She, therefore, was optimistic that government’s intervention to adequately finance TVET would not only enhance teaching and learning but would attract more females to enrol in TVET.

“We call for an equal access for all women and men to affordable, quality, technical, vocational and tertiary education and recommend that government include TVET as part of this year’s Voluntary National Review report on the Sustainable Development Goal 4 to be submitted at the United Nations General Assembly in July.”

On employment, she stated that TVET remained one key solution in helping the country deal with unemployment, adding that TVET must be an important part of the county’s employment creation agenda since white collar jobs were becoming less available.

She also called on the government to move the Hyundai-KOICA Institute in Koforidua which was still under the Ministry of Trade and Industries to the Ministry of Education for effective coordination.

For his part, the Eastern Regional Manager for Plan International, Ghana, Mr Kofi Adade Debrah, called on the government to extend the free education and its adequate funding to TVET institutions to cut cost of teaching and learning.

Speaking on the theme, Mr Debrah also called for an affirmative action of positive discrimination where the government and other stakeholders would invest more in girls TVET.

“When that is done, it will serve as an incentive to attract more females and my outfit has shown the way by sponsoring female students to study TVET in Hyundai-KOICA Institute and government can do same.”

He also called for a change in perception that technical education was for men and encouraged more females to pursue technical education, adding it would help achieve equality in the country.