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Professor Kingsley Nyarko, Deputy Minister for Education, in charge of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), says TVET is the key to addressing the skills gap and graduate unemployment in the country.
According to him, TVET was the way to go, and commended President Akufo Addo's government, for the huge investment in TVET institutions by providing them with essential infrastructure and support that enabled students to receive practical training, making them job-ready after graduating.
Prof. Nyarko, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwadaso, said this when he led a delegation from the Ministry of Education to pay a working visit to the Kumasi Technical University (KSTU) in Kumasi.
The visit, according to the MP, was to know first-hand the position, progress, problems and prospects of the University and ways to address their challenges for effective improvement.
The MP explained that, since 2017, the government had invested more than GHØ6 billion in the TVET sector.
The investment, he said, had resulted in improvements to the infrastructure at TVET schools, the provision of state-of- the-art laboratories, the retooling of the existing laboratories and workshops, and the provision of modern technology and machines.
The Deputy Minister said the country would continue to prioritise Q education as the most crucial factor in national development.
"What will be the value of education if it does not improve our societies, make them functional, address problems, help us to survive and thrive and adapt to new challenges," he said.
Prof. Nyarko noted that nations that had developed and continued to progress and prosper were those that had prioritised education and made industrialization a core component of development.
The MP used the opportunity to inspect some of the existing and new laboratories in the school and commended the government for the huge investment in the TVET.
He called on Ghanaians to vote for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) come December 07, to continue its good work for better national development.
Prof. Gabriel Dwomoh, the Vice-Chancellor of KSTU, said TVET transformation had a clear path to bridge the gap between skills acquisition and academics.
According to him, industrialization required that, in addition to producing a knowledge society, the skills development of the citizenry was critical to sustaining economies and making the nation prosperous and progressive.
Prof. Dwomoh explained that it was imperative to empower Ghanaian youth with practical skills to create employment not only for themselves but others, to help reduce the pressure on the government for public employment.
He encouraged Ghanaian youth to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the government to enrol in TVET institutions for a better future.
According to him, Ghanaians must shift focus from the long-held perception that TVET equipped the youth to only set up their own small businesses or become entrepreneurs from scratch to a well-defined sector to feed industry and the labour market.
The Vice-Chancellor commended the government for the huge investment in the TVET institutions, adding that, TVET and entrepreneurial skills were the surest ways to position Ghana to match developed countries
