LET'S BUILD HUMAN CAPACITY FOR OIL INDUSTRY (PAGE 54)

THE discovery of oil in commercial quantities in Ghana has thrown a serious challenge to the technical sector of the country’s educational system, Dr Ali Abugre, the Deputy Managing Director in charge of Engineering and Management at the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), has observed.
He has, therefore, advocated the provision of proper infrastructure and systems in technical institutions and universities to build the human capacity to handle the country’s upstream sector of the oil Industry.
Dr Abugre was speaking at the first commendation service of the Tema Technical Institute (TTI) during which 269 students passed out after undertaking courses in various fields, including mechanical engineering craft practice, industrial mechanics, electrical installation works, welding, photography, tailoring, blocklaying and printing in both advanced and intermediate programmes.
The service was on the theme, “Technical education and training — A dependable source of effective industrial growth and self-employment”.
Dr Abugre was of the view that learning must be acquired by means of projects to ensure occupational competency to enable trainees to develop entrepreneurial thinking at end of their training.
He explained that on-the-job training programmes had ignored long-term strategic importance to the economy as a whole to meet career objectives and rather focused on the needs of the enterprise.
Dr Abugre called on employers organisations to play important roles in influencing training policy and governance, drawing attention to the need for long-term investment in continuous training.
He noted that vocational education and training had been seen as a solution to the absence of skilled labour to industry, as well as facilitating the transition from school to work for disadvantaged youth.
The Director of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Asamoah Duodu, indicated that there was an increasing importance now attached to technical and vocational education and training by most African governments, including Ghana.
He observed that that was reflected in the various poverty reduction strategy papers that governments had developed in collaboration with the World Bank.
Mr Duodu said the country’s reward system had disadvantaged those who entered technical and vocational institutions because consideration was given to those with university degrees, irrespective of the skills they had.
He stated that that had resulted in graduates of most technical institutes craving to enter the universities, instead of improving with the skills acquired.
Mr Duodu said that trend of affairs could adversely affect the country’s technical skills, with serious consequences for enrolment in the engineering and building programmes in polytechnics.
He said there were many young men and women drifting into the urban centres in search of jobs but because they had purely academic-oriented education, without any occupational skills, they had become unemployed.
Mr Duodu advised the graduates to apply the virtues they had learnt to their future endeavours to meet the challenges waiting for them.
He urged them to work hard and be submissive to their employers to gain the necessary experience, which would mould them into masters of their trades.
The principal of the institute, Mr George Provençal, said the 269 students had two to three years academic and practical training in their various fields.
They were also given industrial internship, educational field trips, among others, that went into effective technical training, he added.