Government is being urged to develop a formal and informal educational curriculum that seeks to bridge the yawning gap between academia and industry in order to sustain its industrialization Program towards reducing the perennial unemployment situation in the country.
Mr. Richard Nsenkyire, an Industrialist and General Manager of Samartex Timber and Plywood Company Limited, believes this move would curtail government’s expensive importation of foreign expertise and labour to augment industrial productivity in the country.
Government is being urged to develop a formal and informal educational curriculum that seeks to bridge the yawning gap between academia and industry in order to sustain its industrialization Program towards reducing the perennial unemployment situation in the country.
Mr. Richard Nsenkyire, an Industrialist and General Manager of Samartex Timber and Plywood Company Limited, believes this move would curtail government’s expensive importation of foreign expertise and labour to augment industrial productivity in the country.
About 400 factories are projected to be built by 2020, under the government’s one district-one factory project following high commitments and enthusiasm that have greeted the initiative from foreign and local investors in the country. Although a comprehensive implementation plan seeks to establish about 216 factories countrywide, by the close of 2020, the National Coordinator of the Secretariat, Mrs. Gifty Ohene-Konadu, told the Graphic Business in May this year that, her outfit was determined to increase the number to 400 factories in four years. The program, according to her, is also expected to facilitate the creation of between 7,000 and 15,000 jobs per district and 1.5million and 3.2million jobs nationwide by the end of 2020. She indicated that her Secretariat had at the time recorded a total of $6billion in pledges from both local and foreign investors as commitment to support the initiative.
Industrialist Richard Nsenkyire is calling for the implementation of an intensive industrial capacity building program to justify the spending of the initial budget approval of $45million as initial capital commitment from the government towards the execution of the program. Speaking in an interview, the Samartex GM blamed the collapse and non performance of Ghana’s factories on bad management practices, the use of ill-equipped labour, lack of entrepreneurial approach by political managers, and the seeming non-existence of a National Industrialization Strategy towards sustaining productivity and employment generation.
“A visionary leader needs like-minded people to help him implement his agenda for national benefit and I urge President Akuffo Addo to implement this national development policy cautiously”, He concluded.
