President John Dramani Mahama has launched a nationwide Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training for teachers across the country aimed at improving their knowledge base.
To this effect, rLG Institute of Technology, a subsidiary of rLG Communications, had been contracted by government to train 50,000 teachers nationwide as well as provide them with laptops for the first phase of the project.
Speaking at the launch on Wednesday President Mahama extolled the importance of ICT in the lives of professionals and called on the teachers to make good use of the opportunity offered by government.
"Nowadays the all professional as well as teacher can use the computer for a lot of things including the preparation of lesson notes and others", he said.
He said government was working to ensure that in the near future, projectors would replace blackboards in our classrooms, adding that government would endeavour to distribute 400,000 laptops to teachers across the country in the next four years.
He said government would also initiate a project aimed at building 20,000 apartments for teachers across the country as well as build 200 Senior High Schools (SHS) in communities, which did not have SHS within the next four years.
The President also used the opportunity to launch another project aimed at distributing 4,000 laptops to 152 basic schools in the Greater Accra Region in which each school was entitled to 24 laptops.
Mr Rowland Agambire, Chief Executive Officer, rLG Communications, said the training for the teachers would be done in batches, involving 1,250 teachers per week, who would undergo an intensive training for a period of five days.
"We have placed and resourced all our 62 training centres across the country in readiness for this project and have engaged a team of knowledgeable ICT experts on Microsoft Software to conduct the training", he said.
He said each teacher would be given a set of training materials as well as certificate upon completion of the training.
Hr expressed the hope that the investments and interventions by government and rLG would turn the entire education sector around for the better.
Mr Lee Ocran, Minister of Education, said government had initiated a project aimed at rehabilitating all science laboratories across the country at 81 million pounds.
He said government had also contracted Zepto and Omatek, which are also into the production of computers in the country, to assist rLG in the manufacturing and distribution of the laptops to the schools and teachers across the country.
Madam Vivian Adjo Tetteh, Accra Metro Coordinator for Science, Maths and ICT Education, on behalf of the recipients expressed appreciation to government for the offer.