A ground breaking ceremony has been held at the Regional Maritime University to commence construction of a Global Diving and Training Institute, which when finished would serve as a professional diving and underwater welding training facility.

The facility is expected to sit on a total land area of approximately 4188 square metres and would consist of an administration block, technical block, classroom block, diving tanks and a deck.

According to the Vice Chancellor of RMU, Professor Elvis Nyarko, the Global Diving Institute, has a 5-year agreement in place to jointly run operations with the Regional Maritime University.

He said this initiative would provide students of RMU the opportunity to venture into key maritime operations such as near-shore diving, deep sea diving as well as inland water diving.

“There are times when a vessel’s equipment which need to be salvaged from the deep sea environment and people with such skills will be able to go down and salvage those equipment,” he explained.

He also said, this in addition to underwater welding training is very opportune for Ghanaians to consolidate the investments made in the Oil and gas services sector.

“Those people who acquire this training will be able to do underwater welding because a lot of the oil and gas jobs are done beneath the sea so people who know how to dive and have welding skills can do underwater welding as well,” he added.

Dr. Kojo Adusei Fosu, CEO of the Global Diving and Training Institute, revealed that his team consists of ex-US navy divers and ex-British Navy Divers, who would deliver expert training to students who would enrol in the institute.

“I have partners that are ex US navy divers, ex British navy divers that were instructors in the oil and gas field for a combination of about 100 years, and they are going to bring their expertise to train Ghanaians like students of RMU, the navy and anybody that wants to partake in this.”

He explained the benefits Ghana would derive from trained divers and underwater welding professionals.

“If we have Ghanaians doing this job, the revenue as a matter of fact is about five hundred dollars to nine hundred dollars per day in income. if we extrapolate it to a month, it’s fifteen thousand dollars’ income. That is money staying in here as opposed to these guys bringing people from the outside so for the local economy it is going to increase revenue.”