Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Bono Regional Minister
China has provided a US$130-million facility to upgrade five technical universities and 10 technical institutions in the country.
The facility, under the Ghana-China project, a joint initiative, between the government and China aimed at enhancing vocational training by growing talent for industries through the establishment of advanced training.
Under the project, the beneficiary institutions would see an upgrade in the construction of State-of-the-Art training workshops for mechanical, automobile, civil and welding engineering, among others.
Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Bono Regional Minister, who disclosed this, affirmed the government determination to prioritise Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) as the sure way to push national industrialization drive to achieve a “Ghana beyond aid”.
The Regional Minister said this when she launched the Sunyani Technical University (STU) Strategic and Master Plans at the university campus on Friday.
Mad Owusu-Banahene indicated TVET was very critical for sustainable national development, saying the government was retooling and re-engineering technical and vocational education to align with modern trends.
In that regard, she said the government had rolled out several infrastructure projects which include upgrading of 35 National and Vocational Training Institutes (NVTIs), as well as colleges of education that specialised in technology.
There is an ongoing refurbishment of existing infrastructure and construction of a new head office, 10 regional offices and five apprenticeship offices, she said and added the government had also equipped 26 Trades and ICT equipment for the NVTI centres.
Other interventions, Mad Owusu-Banahane explained included competency-based training programmes to cover 700 trainers across the 34 NTVIs; a major revision of the curricula of TVET schools to make them relevant to the needs of the nation’s evolving economy.
The government is also providing 33 seater-bus for each of the NVTIs and pickup vehicles for the head and regional offices as well as construction of 20 State-of-the-Art TVET institutions in all the regions.
Mad Owusu-Banahene called on stakeholders to contribute their quota while the government played its role in investing heavily in infrastructure and equipment to create the enabling environment for technical education to thrive.
She commended the STU for its bold initiative in taking up the challenge of producing electrical vehicles under the university’s niche area of electrical and electronics engineering.
Professor Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah, the Vice-Chancellor of the STU, said the strategic and master plans remained a coordinated action towards facilitating the development of the university.