Director-General of the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), Dr. Fred Kyei Asamoah, has called on policy makers to make TVET a national agenda.

He said many western countries that prioritised the use of technical and vocational education have enjoyed significant improvement in their economies and growth of employment for the youth.

Dr. Fred Kyei Asamoah was speaking in an interview with Jay Foley on Prime Morning, Tuesday ahead of a competition set to be held by the World Skills Ghana.

"Let’s just take Finland; recently, their economy turned around. They had 50% of their young ones going for TVET. Let’s talk about Germany, about 70%; Switzerland has about 78%."

Dr. Asamoah noted that Ghana has ignored the essence of TVET education for decades, a situation he blamed for the frequent import of foreign technological goods into the country.

“We love to have things coming from outside more than we produce them here. The perception we have about technical and vocational education is bad. We haven’t paid much attention to technical and vocational education and, in fact, skill development.

"That has made us run to other countries to import goods and services [because] TVET has been downplayed for a long time," he lamented.

He maintained that the nation must strive to make the youth competitive on the international market in terms of technical and vocational education, adding that "skill is an international currency."

According to him, the country has only been focusing on knowledge acquisition without emphasis on industrial skills.

"In 2018, when the first five-year strategy plan for technical and vocational education was approved by cabinet for implementation, one of the objectives was to improve on access; that means, we need to have more people going into TVET," he said.

He announced that successful competitors in the World Skills Ghana competition, will travel to Namibia for the World Skills Africa competition before they proceed to the bigger competition slated for 2022.

"On October 27, 2021, the Vice President of the Republic, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia will be launching the World Skills 2021 alongside with our TVET Expo."