OIC BUILDS CAPACITY OF UNSKILLED WORKERS (PAGE 29)

THE Opportunities Industrialisation Centre (OIC) has successfully built the capacity of 2,513 youth in various vocational skills such as fashion designing, masonry, computer, office management, plumbing and carpentry since 1977.
Other areas in which the youth who have had the opportunity to acquire vocational skills at the OIC have benefited are hair braiding, baking, palm oil extraction, tiling, steel bending, barbering and shoe-making.
About 69 per cent of the beneficiaries are females and they are now in various productive areas, supporting national development.
The institution, which aims at offering effective and efficient vocational training to the youth to make them more productive to contribute meaningfully to sustainable national socio-economic development, has decided to introduce catering and electrical installation into its curriculum.
This is to open more job opportunities for the youth who will be trained there.
The Programme Manager, Mr E. K. Amos, who announced this during the 27th certification ceremony in Kumasi at the weekend, pointed out that those who had graduated from the centre had been employed in both the public and private sectors and were performing creditably in their areas of endeavour.
He said to make the centre more productive to continue to serve the interest of the public, management was reviewing the curriculum. It would also replace obsolete tools and equipment with modern ones.
Mr Amos gave the assurance that the centre would continue to offer programmes that would attract the youth from both junior and senior high schools, as well as those who were within the 16 to 35 age bracket to enable them to acquire employable skills.
He said notwithstanding the contribution the centre was making in youth training to facilitate their job placement, it was going through many challenges, such as inadequate accommodation, which was the major constraint undermining its development.
He explained that lack of hostel facilities was making it impossible for the centre to admit the requisite number of youth.
He, therefore, appealed to philanthropists and individuals to support the centre financially to develop hostel facilities to bring the accommodation problems under control.
He said inadequate infrastructure was also preventing the centre from introducing new programmes that would attract the youth, stressing that the public should support the centre financially to enable it to meet such obligations.