Dr Bawumia, who made the observation when the leadership of the Commission for TVET (CTVET) presented winners of this year’s WorldSkills competition to him at the Jubilee House in Accra, said: “When you acquire skills, you are able to create your own job or you get a job easily, since the world now is a world of skills and not a world of certificates, per se.”

Background

This year’s national competition was held at the Accra Technical Training Centre (ATTC) between October 27 and October 29.

WorldSkills is a movement of change with 85 member countries and regions, with Ghana being the 81st member and first West African country in the international movement.

Being a group of people and organisations that together advance the shared social objective of increasing the provision of skills, WorldSkills helps young people who want to change their lives and the fortunes of their communities.

It does that by inspiring world-class excellence in skills development, introducing the youth to a variety of skilled careers and building their capacity by providing exchange programme opportunities.

The CTVET, which is spearheading the competition, was established by the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) to regulate, promote and administer TVET for transformation and innovation for sustainable development.

Out of the 73 people who participated in the three-day competition, 15, with various skills and backgrounds such as automobile technology, mechatronics, electrical installation, hairdressing, beauty therapy, graphic design and welding and fabrication technology, emerged as winners in their respective categories.

World of skills

“The world now is a world of skills; it’s not a world of certificates, per se; that is, show me what you can do. So for our youthful population, we have to understand that the future is in acquiring skills and making sure we have a core that is focused on skills acquisition in this regard,” the Vice-President said.

He said he was happy with the achievements of the winners and said launching the WorldSkills competition by the TVET Service showed that the government was very focused on TVET and had reorganised and invested so much in the sector.

He commended the award winners for their hard work and encouraged them to go to the Africa skills competition in Namibia in March next year and excel.

“We expect you to go and come back with a gold medal from the Africa skills competition. All of Ghana will be behind you and support you. You can do it because you can compete with anybody in the world,” he told the award winners.

Vice-President Bawumia was also grateful to the staff and instructors from all the technical schools and technical universities, saying: “If we execute this responsibility, you will see a brighter future for Ghana and we are going to build a core of very skilled youth who will be ready for the job market.”

CTVET

The Director-General of the CTVET, Dr Fred Asamoah, in a brief remark, said some of the participants from technical schools beat their counterparts from the technical universities, a development he described as enough proof that Ghana could compete anywhere in the world.

A Deputy Minister of Education, Ms Gifty Twum Ampofo, on behalf of the CTVET team, presented a memento to Dr Bawumia for his dedicated support for the sector.