Ramseyer Vocational/Technical Institute in Kumasi last Saturday graduated 93 trainees, who undertook a three-year training programme in catering, fashion design, furniture craft, block laying and concreting, electrical installation and advance catering.
The school in collaboration with its German partners, Kassel Education Fund, presented working tools including sewing machines, wheel barrows, cooking utensils, electric irons and testimonials valued over GH¢8,000 to the trainees to enable them start their own business.
Speaking on the theme, "Technical, Vocational and Training - the Bedrock of the Nation's Growth," Dr Lord Emmanuel Asamoah, Principal of Garden City University College in Kumasi, said vocational and technical experts were indispensable in all spheres of life.
He said it was critical that training institutions "give trainees the right types of training needed to enable them provide satisfactory services to society.
Dr Asamoah noted that there was always a huge financial or emotional price people paid when badly-trained technicians and artisans were hired in homes, offices and factories.
"Mediocre training or lack of training had sometimes resulted in several unfortunate incidents in which, for instance, building have collapsed leading to loss of lives or injuries, expensive cars have sometimes come back from workshop with disappointing results, buildings burnt down to ashes." he said.
Dr Asamoah, therefore, urged the Ministry of Education to work out a budget distribution formulae that would ensure equity to all sectors saying "if we perpetuate the present lopsided promotion of academic and professional programmes, which are accessed to large extent by children from privileges and less deprived families, we may unwittingly by encouraging the creation of class society with potential dire consequences someday".
Mr Emmanuel Appiah, Principal of the Institute, said the school has started an advanced 10-year catering course and a three-year electrical installation programme.
He said almost all candidates, who sat for an external examination, recorded a good performance in the practical field but performed averagely in the theory.
He said the school has cultivated maize on a five-acre of land this year and hoped to bag over 20 maxi-bags at the end of the season adding that animal production, sheep, goats, poultry and piggery also featured in the school's farming activities.
The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II in an address read on his behalf by Nana Owusu Nyanin, Chief of Kwamo, praised the Presbyterian Church of Ghana for establishing the school to provide the youth with knowledge and the requisite employable skills to make self-reliant.
He urged the trainees to eschew negative life styles and attitudes and work hard so that they would be successful in future.
Madam Linda Agyei, acting Director, Vocational Training for Females, a non-governmental organization under the Presbyterian Church appealed to the trainees to be proactive and work assiduously in every corner they find themselves to be able to improve on their living standard.