Accra, July 13, GNA - Mr Yaw Barimah, Minister of Manpower Development and Employment, on Wednesday said the Ministry was exploring many avenues to training the youth in skills to make them employable. He the Ministry had accepted a proposal by the Country Representative of Opportunities Industrial Centre (OIC) Ghana, Mrs Carla Dominigue Denizard to rehabilitate an unused skills training centre in Gyedu near Kenyasi in the Brong Ahafo Region to train the youth in the area in employable skills.

Mr Barimah said the facility was a Government property that was to be used as an Integrated Community Centre for Employable Skills but it was being under-utilised.

He explained that the Ministry would soon take steps to make the facility available to OIC, which could improve and make optimum use of it.

The Minister was briefing Mr Ronarld Howard, the new President and Chief Executive of OIC when he called on him as a follow up to a vision put forward by the Former Minister, Mrs Cecilia Bannerman to have OIC programme spread throughout the country.

Mr Barimah said the Ministry's aim had been to train the youth with sustainable skills, especially when it was realised from a registration exercise conducted on the number of unemployed youth that most of them had no ready skills for employment that the labour market demanded. He said the Ministry therefore embarked on a programme known as Skills Training and Employment Placement (STEP).

He said STEP could be a complement to what other organisations like OIC were doing and there was therefore the need to collaborate to achieve the desired goals since the public sector might not be developed enough to absorb all the unemployed youth.

"We need to get the opportunities to the rural areas and I am glad you are thinking along this line".

He said with assistance from the Millennium Challenge Account the Ministry could assist OIC in its efforts to explore more training avenues for the youth.

Mr Howard said there were 70 OIC programmes the world over and 47 training centres in 19 countries. Mrs Denizard said OIC had been actively involved in community development programmes in the Brong Ahafo Region and Tarkwa in the Western Region to enhance the lives of the people through the facilitation income generating activities.

She said the facility the Minister had released to the training programmes would further enhance OIC's ability to deliver. 14 July 04