Ministry equips Koforidua Training Centre

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) through the Ghana Social Opportunities Project (GSOP) has handed over a number of assets to the Koforidua Training Centre (KTC).

The GSOP is a World Bank-funded intervention being managed by the Government through the MLGRD to provide temporary income earning opportunities to the poor in rural communities during the dry season.

The casual employment is in the form of providing intensive labour for the construction and rehabilitation of feeder roads, digging and rehabilitation of small earth dams, and community tree planting, among others.

The assets, which were procured under an International Labour Organization (ILO) Partnership Agreement, included a well-furnished office space, a Toyota pick-up vehicle, five tractor heads with 10 accompanying trailers, two water bowers and a set of office equipment.

The Ministry, through the GSOP and in collaboration with the Ministry of Roads and Highways (MRH) also provided the Centre with two practitioners’ guides on Labour-Intensive Public Works (LIPW) to turn in into an an accredited centre of excellence in the delivery of LIPW capacity building programmes.

The manuals, which were launched as part of the programme by Professor S.I.K. Ampadu, Provost of the Engineering School of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), were to serve as resource materials for training and research by KTC and all LIPW practitioners, local contractors and community-based organizations.

According to Mr Isaac Adjei-Mensah, the Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, the government partnered the ILO in the acquisition of the equipment to ensure that KTC was adequately equipped to play its role as envisioned within the GSOP.

He said, the entire programme was in line with the government’s policy to generate employment opportunities for the people in the farming communities, who during off seasons were unemployed and would need extra income to supplement their low earnings.

Mr Adjei-Mensah invited other partners to support the KTC, which he said, was fast developing into a Regional Centre of excellence in the road sector capacity building.

The Centre has so far trained road engineers and artisans from Burkina Faso and other land-logged areas from the Sahelean zones of Africa.

Handing over the equipment and the manuals to the Ministry of Roads and Highways, for onward submission to the KTC, Mr Nii Lante Vanderpuije, the Deputy Minister for LGRD, said his Ministry was set to implement a policy that would make District Assemblies capture budgets towards activities that fell under the LIPW.

“If our district assemblies would capture and have a strong relationship with GSOP, life will be bearable for the rural folks in the country,” he said.

The MLGRD, he said, was working on setting aside a budget that would ensure the enhancement of the human resource capacity base of KTC.