The Minister for Education Lee Ocran yesterday sarcastically urged all school drop outs to go to the internet cafes and register for online upgrading courses to become 'useful'. According to the minister the only way those who wish to enroll for such courses online but do not have computers can do that is for them to go to internet cafes and take those courses.

He noted that, it is one of the measures such drop outs themselves can adopt to make themselves useful to the nation. The minister was answering a question on the floor of Parliament posed by Theophilus Tetteh Chaie, MP for Ablekuma Central on what measures have been put in place to ensure that pupils who drop out at the basic level of education are given technical and vocational training to make them useful to the nation.

The minister noted that, government has a policy of providing apprenticeship training for youth who drop out of basic and junior high schools in both formal and informal sectors. According to him, the ministry of Environment in collaboration with NVTI and other agencies responsible for apprenticeship training in the country will be implementing the programme.

He revealed that the curriculum of the programme covers 25 identified skill areas and will include communication, entrepreneurship and numeracy skills. Apprentices will be assessed at the proficiency grade two after the one year training.

He told Members of Parliament that funds have been sourced from GETFUND to enable the apprenticeship programme to start. According to him, a total of 13,000 BECE graduates between 20011 and 2012 will be trained under the first phase.

Similarly, the minister yesterday told Parliament that, government initiated a number of emergency 6 unit classroom blocks in 2010 in response to the erstwhile 4-year Senior High school Programme. Those projects according to Lee Ocran started in June 2010, but could not be completed and commissioned by September 2010.

He noted that that notwithstanding by September 2010, 46 of such structures were completed and handed over to the respective schools at a total cost of GH₵10,990,616.70.

Still in Parliament, the report of the Joint Committee on Finance and Defence and Interior on the credit agreement between the government of Ghana and Fidelity Bank Limited for an amount of Ghana cedi equivalent of up to €24.11 million to finance the purchase of remaining two out of the four MI-171 SH Helicopters for the Ghana Air Force has been approved.

Report by Joan MENSAH / Daily Searchlight Newspaper