Kenyasi (B/A), July 29, GNA - The Management of Ahafo project of Newmont Ghana Gold Limited (NGGL) is to spend 17,000 dollars each on 14 apprentices to undertake a four-year training programme at its plant site at Kenyasi.

The apprentices, selected from Asutifi, Tano North, and Tano South districts of the region, will be taken through occupational safety, slinging and lifting, hand tools, power hand tools, drawing, first aid, trade math and basic electrical on hydraulic pump. After completing the four-year training they would be awarded City and Guilds of London certificate. Mr. Eddy Durfee, maintenance training superintendent of NGGL, said this at the matriculation ceremony of the apprentices at the company's plant site on Tuesday.

The event coincided with the promotion of 28 other apprentices to the second year of the training programme.

Mr Durfee said the NGGL considered the training programme a worthwhile investment and also a further proof of the company's value to develop the people in its operational area to pursue excellence. He said the NGGL apprenticeship programme had been implemented successfully in mine operations involving more than 150 locals and at the process plant with 20 locals. Mr. Durfee said over 700 non-skilled labour were given some training during the pre-construction stage of the Ahafo mine. Mr. Dan V. Michaelsen, General Manager, Environment and Social Responsibility, said the company's apprenticeship programme was designed to support and supplement current recruitment standard shortfalls and to provide training and development opportunities for the Ahafo mine project communities.

He said since the start of the Ahafo mine, the company had demonstrated time and commitment to developing the human resource base of its host communities. "We have done this through the provision of various infrastructures including schools, equipment and training such as the apprenticeship programme." Mr. Michaelsen gave the assurance that NGGL would continue to pursue programmes that would enhance the lot of communities within its catchments areas. Miss Joyce Aryee, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Chamber of Mines, said the global economy was becoming a skills-based one and that the survival of today's youth in such a system depended largely on the set of skills one would acquire. "The situation in the mining industry is no different and requires a largely skilled workforce to stay on top of the competition", she said. Miss Aryee commended NGGL for instituting the programme that would provide the young men and women with life-time skills that would make them competitive not only in the mining industry but beyond it. She said although Newmont recently joined the Ghana Chamber of Mines, the mining company had been able to chalk some remarkable achievements in its social responsibility to their host communities and had remained very committed to the chamber's initiative and programmes. 29 July 09