Traning for the youth

Oil & Gas Training For Volta Youth Victoria receiving her certificate from Dumega Okudzeto Training programmes geared towards training the youth of the Volta region to prepare them for the production of the huge offshore and onshore oil deposits in the Keta Basin are being rolled out in earnest. The first of such training programmes took place at Keta, the coastal municipal capital in the Volta region. 200 graduates, including women, underwent a three-month course and were awarded their certificates last week Friday. An association called Volta Oil and Gas Association (VOGA) has also been created by the trainees with Charles Anthonio as its President. Mr. Anthonio, in speech at the function, urged the government and for that matter, the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders  to include the study of oil and gas in the Integrated Science syllabus at the Junior and Senior High levels in order to make the study of Petro-physics at the university and polytechnic levels easy. He further stated that international financial analysts were hyping information that in the coming years Ghana would be become one of the leading oil crude producer countries because of the impending production of oil in the Keta Basin. The President of the Association disclosed that the decision was taken to prepare the indigenes to play crucial roles in the oil industry in the Keta Basin. He added that there were members from north to south of the region, stating that each member is also equipped with the needed knowledge to locate crude oil and to determine its quantity. Sylvester Tornyeavah, the Keta Municipal Chief Executive, who was the guest speaker, said since 2007 when Ghana found oil the international community has been eagerly waiting to see if the find would be a curse like some other countries on the continent where oil discovery was made. He added that the government had put measures in place to judiciously use the oil find to develop the country. He congratulated all the stakeholders for the bold decision taken to get professionals ahead of the total production of oil and gas in the Volta region so as avoid the mistakes being made by their brothers and sisters in the Western region, where foreigners took over a large percentage of the industry. The MCE counseled the trainees not see the three-month programme as a guarantee to secure jobs since the oil and gas industry requires sophistication. The chairman of the occasion, Dumegah Raymond Okudzeto, in his remarks, stated that it would be suicidal for people in the area not take advantage of the God-given natural resources by preparing the youth and empowering them to take the commanding heights of the oil and gas sector of the economy. “If by a carefully coordinated campaign and determination, we are able to train thousands of our youth in oil and gas and other auxiliary industries, then we would be on the war path to poverty reduction and accelerated economic development,” he stressed. Dumega Okudzeto, the founder and president of Volta Foundation, a development NGO and an international businessman, indicated that if the youth were aggressively encouraged to develop the necessary courage and fortitude to venture into the industry, many of them would not need to travel far to find employment in the wake of activities in the Volta Basin. He further disclosed that his outfit was working hard to lay a solid base for the Volta region by pursuing the construction of the Keta habour to serve as a backbone for the oil industry. He added that plans were far advanced to construct an oil refinery in the region and a railway line to the refinery. Another project, Dumega Okudzeto mentioned, was the development of a first class sports infrastructure in the region to train the youth in endurance and fitness to pursue other careers of their choice. In a good will message to VOGA, a member of the Council of State, Dr. Bernard Glover debunked the notion held by many people that the southern sector of the Volta region was economically self-sufficient and that there was no need for serious government intervention. He indicated that because of the widely-held notion a body had been formed to lobby government for more development funds in the area. From Amos Amaglo, Keta