Sogakope, July 19, GNA- Mr Yaw Barimah, Minister of Manpower, Development and Employment at the weekend blamed the country's unemployment situation on previous educational policies, which were pro-"white-collar job".

"We cannot do tomorrow's work with yesterday's tools, if we wanted to catch up with the industrialised world", he said.

Mr Barimah was addressing the graduation ceremony of 147 students of the Comboni Vocational and Technical Institute (COMVOTEC) at Sogakope in the Volta Region.

He said more than half of the one million respondents in the recent registration exercise of the unemployed youth in the country lacked knowledge and training in vocational and technical related fields and this showed the magnitude of the problem confronting the country. The Minister said success depends on the ability and resolve to nurture the youth to use their "heads, hands and hearts practically".

Mr Barimah commended the role of religious organisations, especially the Catholic Church towards educating the youth to become self-reliant. Mr John M. K. Worclachjie, Principal of the institute wondered why in this era of Information Communication Technology (ICT) many people still thought that technical and vocational education was less important. "Even today when government has realised the harmful effect of the omission and making frantic efforts to correct the anomaly, public response is not satisfactory enough", he said.

Mr Kenneth Dzirasah, Member of Parliament for South Tongu said technical and vocational training must be sustained for the socio-economic development of the country.

He donated six boxes of exercise books to the institute as his contribution to the smooth administration of the school.

The institute founded by an Italian Reverend Father, Richard Novati, a Missionary in 1988 with 120 students and grew up to 450.