“You can never achieve anything good with demonstration, unless dialogue” –  Regional Minister tells youths in Ahafo

The Minister made this appeal at the maiden Construction Worker Training Programme  matriculation and graduation ceremony held at Terchire in the Tano North Municipality for 114 youths in various apprenticeship programs.

According to Mr Boakye, jobs and it’s complimentary skills set are changing, as such, there is the need to build the competences and skills of the country’s workforce to meet these changing times and reiterated government’s commitment to transforming the educational sector and promotion of job creation through Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

He contiuned that, while, government is equiping the youths through formal education, Newmont Africa is also using non-formal means to compliment government’s efforts and expressed profound gratitude to the company for the massive support to the people in the region.

“What we are witnessing today is clear evidence of massive support Newmont is giving to the region by a way of preparing our youths to meet these changing times. When I assumes office, we decided to equip the youths in the region by way of giving them apprenticeship training so we contacted Newmont for support and the company released GHC 1m (One million Ghana Cedis), to support the intiative.” Very soon we will roll out the program and we have targeted 1,200 youths across the six districts in the region. 200 youths have been selected from each district, he said.

“Newmont is the only corperate institution we can rely on in this region, the rest are small scale industries and cannot employ more people like Newmont. For Ahafo to develop we need more corperate institutions like Newmont in the region to employ our yourhs.” I have been going round looking for investors to come and invest in the region, he added.

He revealed that, not too long ago himself and Hon Ernest Kwarteng, MEC for Tano North traveled to Portugal, Spain, France and Italy with the aim of getting investors to come and invest in the region and where ever they go they want to know whether there is industrial peace, peace, availability of land, water and electricity.

“At one point when we were trying to convince some investors, they showed us demonstrations that were organized in the region by some youths in one of the towns and they added that, now you want us to come and invest there, how can we invest in a region where there is no industrial peace.” But we assured them that was in the past and will make sure such an act will never happen in Ahafo again, he noted.

“I will use this opportunity to appeal to the youths in region to let peace prevail especially industrial peace. As I stand here, in my days as teacher to now, have not seen anyone who have used demonstrations to achieve his objectives but with dialogue you will achieve your objectives even more than expected. We are not saying every operation of the company is right but all we are saying is that when you find any wrong doing in their operations, let’s dialogue for peace to prevail.”

In all, 72 young men and women from the host communities who went through three months training in weilding and fabrication, steel bending and scaffolding where giving certificates while 48 were ushered into masonry and carpentry training.