Accra, Oct 5, GNA - Mr Joseph Henry Mensah, MP for Sunyani East, on Thursday announced that Government would place greater emphasis on technical and vocational education from the next academic year. He said the new emphasis would be part of a pragmatic programme to equip the youth for accelerated national development.

Mr Mensah, former Senior Minister, who was delivering a lecture to mark the 80th anniversary of the Noble Order of the Knights of Marshall, in Accra, expressed regret that a chunk of the Ghanaian youth who did not have post-basic education idled for lack of technical skills. Speaking on the theme: "Harnessing the Energies of the Youth for Development in Contemporary Ghana", Mr Mensah called for a training that would equip the youth with world-class knowledge and skills, hard work and discipline to achieve increasingly high levels of productivity. Mr Mensah said the present state of technical and vocational education was appallingly deficient, because the education system placed much emphasis on grammar, to the disadvantage of technical and vocational education.

He said Ghana needed to consciously develop a national consensus to shift from the focus of developing a small section of the youth and put the searchlight on the development of the larger majority. Mr Mensah said the development of the youth should be devoid of partisan consideration.

Interspersing his lecture with the expression, "our eyes must be red for development", Mr Mensah said Ghanaians must develop a passion for achievement and excellence and pointed out that the nation had a duty to prepare the youth for higher productivity.

"Just the way we walk shows that our eyes are not red. Look at the buruli ulcer, Sodom and Gomorrah.... Let out our eyes be red; we do not need a traumatic experience like a tsunami before we talk of rapid development.

"We must have the courage and conviction and get down on how our young ones can be developed. Let's not pamper our children with mobile phones."

Mr Mensah said experience the world over had shown that nations were able to develop not by any reason of innate superiority, but by reason of adopting positive work culture.

"We are all together too casual in our attitude to work. No nation can develop without changing its attitude to work. The American model is a fundamental module in reforming attitudes to work. They send children to earn money and manage it. This training to earn your own money and managing it is a fundamental way to success," Mr Mensah said.

He, however, cautioned misguided indoctrination and idealism, saying children were being deprived of valuable work training under the explanation of exploiting them under child labour.

"I want you to examine the fundamentals of our position" Mr Mensah urged members of the Order and asked: "Are we really committed to be serious to fight against poverty? Are we committed to a rapid development of our nation so that we can also enjoy what other people enjoy?"

He urged the elderly to be prepared to indoctrinate children and the youth on positive culture of work from infancy, else the nation's hope for development would remain a dream.

Prof G W Wireko Brobby, Supreme Knight, said it behoved the Order to produce men and women of quality for Christ.

"What legacy is this generation leaving for its children and the children to come?" Prof Brobby asked.

He said quality Catholic principles demanded a categorical acceptance of merit, high standard, good grade and value for good practice at the workplace, home and the street. This he said called for a better understanding of the problems of the youth.

The Most Rev Charles Gabriel Palmer Buckle, Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, who chaired the lecture, said Ghana ought to be proactive, rather than waiting for traumatic situations to propel its development.