According to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the government has received 12.8 million euros from Austria to maintain 10 Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) institutes in Ghana.
We have also invested an estimated 392 million euros through Planet One of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on infrastructure development at the National Vocational Training Institutes (NVTIs) to support the TVET sector.
This was said by President Akufo-Addo in a speech delivered on his behalf at a spectacular durbar in Sunyani on Saturday to cap off the 55th-anniversary celebration of the Sunyani Technical University by Mr Michael Okyere Baafi, the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry.
The conference’s focus was on “STU, 55 Years of Progress and Achievement in TVET Education: Mobilizing Excellence for Leadership in Ghana’s Industrialization Agenda.”
Due to TVET’s significance to the country’s socioeconomic development, the government had since 2007 established a solid foundation for it, he said.
One of the primary initiatives the government has undertaken to advance skill training in the nation is the renovation and modernization of laboratories and workshops in technical universities and institutes.
Ghana and its Chinese partners worked together on the project, which had an estimated cost of US$199 million, through the AVIC International Holding Corporation of China.
This was done to give the 10 technical universities and the 13 technical institutes cutting-edge equipment to improve skill training at these institutions.
Vice-Chancellor of STU Professor Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah voiced worry over the poor state of the university’s access roads and made a request to the government to pave the one-kilometre Waterloo stretch as well as the four-kilometre campus road, which were both in need of an asphaltic overlay.
In order to protect students from being frequently run over by cars, he pleaded for the building of a pedestrian footbridge spanning the Sunyani-Kumasi Highway in front of the university.
Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Bono Regional Minister, said
technical education remained crucial to the nation’s industrialisation agenda, which sought to transform the economic structure from primary to secondary.
“In view of this, the New Patriotic Party-led Government is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that technical education is given the needed impetus to drive the transformation to industrialisation and accelerated socio-economic development of the country,”
she said.
In order to give Middle School graduates the chance to get practical instruction in craft programs, the STU was founded as the Sunyani Technical Institute (SUTECH) in 1967.
These included intermediate carpentry and joinery, electrical installation, intermediate block laying and concreting, and intermediate motor vehicle mechanics.
In 1997, the institute became a polytechnic, and 19 years later, in 2016, it underwent a transformation to become the STU, with a new mandate to offer higher education and grant its own degrees, diplomas, and other credentials.
The Technical Universities Act of 2016 stipulates that the courses must cover applied arts, science, and technology as well as TVET (ACT 922 as amended).
Source: Ghana News Agency