Ghana’s Head of Civil Service, Mr Woeli K. Kemevor has bemoaned the lack of conscious effort by governments of West Africa to make funds available for Civil Service training and management.

“Regrettably, training and development has generally not attractive the attention it required in the West African sub-region – Sometimes no funds are made available at all because no nobody appreciate the importance of training the service,” he said.

Opening a sub regional training on Monday in Accra on “Ethical Leadership for Quality Productivity Improvement Course for Sierra Leone and Liberia”, Mr Kemevor stressed the need for civil service in the sub-region to collaborate more by sharing knowledge and expertise as well institutional facilities.

Productivity in the Civil Service required improvement, he said, especially in the science and technology environments, noting “this can be achieved through continuous training of our staff.”

He said the training signified another demonstration of the strong cooperation between the Office of the Head of Civil Service (OHCS) Ghana and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), spanning many years.

He announced, however, that the Ghana Government had approved the construction of a six-storey hostel facility for the Service to make accommodation readily available to colleagues from the sub-region who attended courses in Ghana.

The course being spearheaded by the OHCS in collaboration with the Civil Service Training Centre (CSTC) in Ghana and JICA is the first of in the series of training programmes in the sub region to be designed. It is under the “Project for the institutional capacity development of the CTSC.”

The Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Naoto Nikai assured Japan’s commitment to strengthen the collaboration with the OHCS to continue to build the capacity of civil servants in the country.

He also stressed on the need to show more commitment to the call to promote south-south cooperation to ensure the smooth exchange of resources, technology and knowledge among countries.

The Liberian Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Rudolf von Ballmoos in a brief statement on her behalf, praised Ghana for always showing the lead to assist her neighbours, saying ”Ghana is doing well not leaving Liberia out Liberia and Sierra Leone behind (both countries of which had suffered civil unrest).

“Ghana is doing that so that all of us will develop at the same pace and level…” he added.

The Sierra Leonean High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Bakie Remoe-Doherty thanked JICA, for what she described as an exceptional contribution to building capacity in the civil service in the sub region.

The CSTC goal, Mrs Dora Dei-Tumi, Principal of the Centre, said was to become a centre of excellence and a citadel of knowledge in civil service training and capacity development in the sub region.

“…our desire has been to build the capacity of our facilitators into professional trainers delivering cutting edge programmes in a state-of-the art-facility for domestic and international civil servants,” she said and indicated that the facility was currently under construction with funds from JICA.

She noted that the Centre had carried out Training Needs Analysis in both Sierra Leone and Liberia, which enabled it to design the relevant curriculum and course manuals on three thematic areas such as leadership, ethics and quality productivity improvement.

To ensure sustainability of the programme, Mrs Dei-Tumi said in 2012, participants would be trained as facilitators for future programmes and for similar projects in facilitators’ home countries.

JICA Chief Representative, Mr Jiro Inamura said the Agency was expecting a bigger impact through the course and expressed the hope that the cooperation within the sub region would be sustained throughout the project implementation period and beyond.

Twenty-four participants, 10 each from Liberia and Sierra Leone and four from Ghana are attending the course, which would end on October 7, 2011.