The Acting Director General of the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, has disclosed that the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has invested almost $ 1 billion dollars in TVET infrastructure and training alone between 2017 and 2021.

This, according to him, makes is the biggest investment made in the sector by a government for decades, indicating that the investment was part of the five-year strategic plan (2018 - 2022) to transform the TVET sector nationwide.

Dr Asamoah disclosed this to the media on Friday to end his two-week nationwide tour and monitoring exercise of the ongoing 2021 May/June Certificate II Core Examination which was administered by the Commission for TVET.

He was very excited with the state of the organization of the examination across the country and pledged to liase with all stakeholders to ensure that the examination remained free and fair for all students.

The strategic plan according to Dr. Asamoah was also tied to the broader Education Sector Plan (ESP) being implemented by the Ministry of Education.

He explained that the government was currently undertaking two major projects to tackle the infrastructure deficit in the various TVET institutions. These projects are the "Ghana-China project on the rehabilitation and upgrade of Technical Universities and Technical" and the "upgrade and modernisation of the TVET system in Ghana".

"We are upgrading 17 technical and vocational institutes across the country and building an office complex to support the unit responsible for TVET examination. Additionally, infrastructure and equipment are being provided at all technical universities to achieve quality delivery at the tertiary level with industry 4.0 standards". Dr Asamoah said.

The Ag. Director General stated that the projects being undertaken were designed to support Government's efforts within the context of the Human Capital Development priorities and to resolve a key development challenge of low quality of skills produced by the Technical and Vocational Education and Training subsector in the country.

He also indicated that, "the government of Ghana through the Ministry of Education and the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), has provided free training for over 17,527 apprentices and master craft persons across the country which cost about 20 million Euros since 2017 to date". An additional 50,000 apprentices will also be trained over the next four years.

Dr Asamoah also hinted that the Government was also putting up five (5) TVET Centres across the country with the one at Anyinam which cost 5.4 million Euros was 80 per cent complete. The remaining four (4) will be located at Pakyi No. 2, Akumadan, Manso Abore and Assin Jakai.Background

The Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government has since 2017 embarked on a massive drive to increase access to TVET education across the country.

Some of the measures put in place to help him achieve his objective of increasing the nation's productivity include the construction of 32 state-of-the-art TVET institutions (two per region) costing about half a billion dollars across all the 16 regions of Ghana.

Cabinet and Parliament in 2019 approved the master framework agreement for all the 32 institutions, commercial (EPC contract) and funding for phase 1 has also been completed. Implementation for phase one is on course and processes have started for phase 2.

The locations for the Phase one (1) are Asem in Kumasi, Akyem Awisa in Eastern Region, Tolibri- Lawra in Upper West, Patuda in Bono East, Dambai in Oti Region, Boako in Western North, Salaga in Savannah, Guabuliga in North East and Kenyasi No.1 in the Ahafo Region.