GAEC provides welding skills training to 1,000 youth
A total of 1,000 youth are being provided with innovative welding skills by the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) under its Technical and Vocational Education and Training programme in order to enable the beneficiaries to set up their own welding workshops.
The one – year training programme, which is being partnered by Boy Child Supportive Care Foundation (BCSCF) and funded by World Bank, aims to provide welding skills to the youth to help support themselves.
The target group are Ghanaians youth aged 16 to 35 and living within Accra and have either a Basic Education Certificate Examination or West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination certificates.
Speaking at the opening in Accra on Tuesday, the Deputy Director, Commercialisation and Communication Directorate of GAEC, Mrs Sheila Frimpong Mensah, said GAEC had ‘tig and mig’ welding machines to leverage support in human resource development.
She stated that GAEC had been training youth in welding for the past seven years and were still looking forward to training more people to get requisite expertise in welding.
This, she noted, would help these young people generate revenue for themselves by becoming entrepreneurs, setting up their own welding businesses and also train other young workers.
Mrs Mensah, who is also the Project Coordinator for TVET at GAEC, added that most of these skilled youth would be employed by corporate institutions that needed welding services just like the oil and gas industry, while some could also travel abroad to work based on the skill acquired at the end of the year.
“When youth are trained to have skills like what we are doing right now and they end up having something doing or set up their own welding shops and making money for themselves, this will not only reduce unemployment rate in the country but also generate revenue for the development of the country,” she explained.
Moreover, Mrs Mensah urged parents to let their children join TVET education so that they can acquire some form of skills even if they were enrolled in a formal education programme, adding that, “it is important for your children to have some skills because now everything in this world is all about TVET.”
She stated that the training was free, trainees would go for training classes twice a week and at the end of the year, they would be awarded certificates.
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BCSCF, MS Edna Korana Yamoah, said she was happy the training programme was targeting young men and more of them were applying to partake in the training, however a few young ladies were also participating.
She indicated that skilling up these young men and getting them to do something meaningful for their lives meant to reducing the number of people on the streets, reducing the level of crimes and social violence in communities, reducing drug abuse and reducing the number of people sent to prison yearly.
BY CECILIA LAGBA YADA
