Honorable Ebenezer Okletey Terlabi while explaining that formalizing apprenticeship goes beyond formal education said the NPP government must adopt the opposition party’s idea to formalize apprenticeship training by supporting both apprentices and their trainers.
“The government must try and adopt the NDC manifesto. When we talk about formalizing apprenticeship, it is not about just the classroom, it is not about the technical schools,” said Mr. Terlabi.
Furthering, he explained that, “The idea was to bring the informal sector together and support them directly by providing some stipends for apprentices and then their masters or madams, that makes them more responsible towards the children because it’s not everybody who would want to enroll at any technical school but then a lot of them are learning by the roadside,” said the lawmaker.
Mr. Okletey Terlabi was speaking in an interview when he presented fifty sewing machines to seamstresses in his constituency as part of his vision of empowering the youth to have decent sources of income by aiding their training at their respective centers. He also paid between Ghc1200 and Ghc1300 being the enrolment fees of each apprentice.
The idea to formalize apprenticeship training, said the MP, was captured in the NDC’s manifesto prior to the last elections where apprentices of various skills training were to receive full government benefits.
He stated, “This programme was captured in the NDC’s 2020 manifesto and if we had won the elections, we would have formalized this kind of apprenticeship programme to enable them access government support.”
According to him, the NPP government did not understand its concept. “They (NPP) do not understand the idea behind the NDC’s formalization of TVET for apprenticeship training,” he said. “Today, the number of people studying outside the classrooms, they are about a thousandfold. Here, for instance, the apprentices are not in the classroom. The NDC’s idea was to make sure that every workshop, we have about three or four apprentices, we classify that as a training center. We provide the tools. We encourage them to train and retain them.
“We formalize it so that we empower those who are training them because it’s an alternative for free SHS,” the MP asserted further.
The MP who says he has so far enrolled more than 500 apprentices into various vocations since entering parliament in 2013 said his gesture was to complement the growing interest in artisanship in his constituency.
“It’s something we always do over here since I became the MP. In this community, we like skills-based employment, not the seamstresses alone but the mechanics, welding, body-building, farming, etc. I have apprentices I have enrolled into training,” he noted.
The legislator’s gesture, he explained was in line with the Krobo youth’s preference for skilled labor as a means of life sustainability.
“The idea is to create a training center, every shop is a potential training center for the youth. We are trying to equip them through this programme. So we are giving it to the madams though it is meant for the apprentices, she’ll use it to train them,” said the lawmaker adding that any of the machines that become faulty would be replaced.
The legislator added that he also has special packages in place awaiting the apprentices who successfully graduate from the training programmes to empower them to start their own businesses.
A beneficiary of Mr. Terlabi’s benevolence in an interview advised young girls to take their apprenticeship seriously by focusing on their training and desist from going after men.
Another who benefitted from the MP’s benevolence and graduated from her training three years ago currently operates her own shop with ten apprentices.
She expressed her heartfelt appreciation to the MP and appealed to him to continue to support her and other seamstresses to train young girls to earn a living.
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The MP and recipients of the donation