The Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Adutwum, has denied claims by former President John Dramani Mahama that government had abandoned a number of education projects initiated by his administration.
According to him the Ministry of Education since the coming into office of the current administration had completed about 25 of the E-blocks and the assertion that projects had been abandoned was wrong and mischievous.
Addressing a news conference in Accra last Tuesday, Dr Adutwum said the Akufo-Addo-led government single-handedly completed 14 of those projects while 11 were sponsored by the World Bank through the Secondary Education Improvement Project (SEIP).
“It appears former President Mahama has been ill-briefed on this matter, and the Ministry wishes to clarify as follows,” he emphasised.
He noted that government through the 1992 Constitution recognised its responsibility of ensuring that every Ghanaian child had a right to education and training to the level and extent possible within the resources of the nation.
“Education and training as we all know plays a major role in employment. Knowing the skills needs of industry is very critical to the growth and development of the various sectors of the economy and the levels of capacities at which they can operate,” added.
The Minister said government would in no way play politics with education since it was the bedrock on which the country’s future lies, as a result the undue politicisation of education matters must be discouraged.
On the cancellation of the Teacher Licensure Examination, he said it would come as a surprise if that was what the former President intended, since it was an initiative of his government which the current administration was continuing because it deemed it important.
He said teaching was gradually being professionalised and Ghana’s case was not different and that was what the licensure examination was intended.
In a related development, the Deputy Minister of Education in-charge Technical Vocation and Education Training (TVET), Mrs Gifty Twum-Ampofo said all the things the former President spoke about were already being undertaken.
She said government had re-emphasised the importance of TVET and skills development and had anchored its key strategies around it to create employment for the youth in Ghana.
Mrs Twum-Ampofo noted that government had invested heavily in the TVET sector, Mr Mahama has lost touch with the reality, stressing that “The president is saying things that are already being done and saying that I’m going to do it when I come. That tells me he is not on the grounds.”
“Government has already made it a priority and has anchored some of its strategies on Skills and TVET that is why it is upgrading all NVTIs, re-tooling the workshops in the Technical Universities and constructing 32 State of the Art TVET institutions across all the regions of Ghana.
The Deputy Minister said currently, AVIC International of China and VACE of Austria were building and upgrading training workshops for all eight Technical Universities, two Polytechnics and 17 Technical and Vocational Institutes under the GES.
In addition to these, she said Planet Core was expanding and upgrading 35 TVET institutions (NVTI, OIC) and establishing 2 new foundries and machining centers in Kumasi and Accra.
“This investment alone is 119 million Euros the equivalent of GHC 642.600, 000.00. This alone is more than the total budgetary allocation to the TVET sector in 2014, which was GHC 243,962,422, representing 3.7 per cent of the total MoE’s budget,” she emphasised.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
