Ghana should place greater emphasis on technical and vocational training in order to accelerate development and significantly bring down youth unemployment confronting it, Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Agyeman Badu II, the chief of Dormaa in the Brong Ahafo Region, has appealed.

He said the country’s over-concentration on secondary education had spawned a generation of graduates eager for only white-collar jobs and with no artisanal abilities.

The Dormaamanhene made these remarks during the 40th anniversary celebration of the Dormaa Vocational Training Institute at Dormaa Ahenkro on Saturday September 24, 2016.

“I urge everyone to take vocational training seriously. If you receive vocational education, you earn yourself employment. Many of us go to school to become doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, and all that. But the training that assures one of a job is the one offered by vocational and technical schools,” he noted.

He drew on the examples of Germany, Austria, and other developed countries – nations he said had made technical and vocational education the foundation of their development – to explain that their emphases on such education had paid off and brought unemployment levels down drastically, adding: “So, if unemployment rates there are lowest for such reason, I will plead that Ghana as a country focuses more attention on vocational and technical education because I believe that will help us. Our problem is that everyone wants to graduate from school and work from an office.”