Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda
The government has stopped upgrading vocational training centres to universities in a bid to enhance technical and vocational training.
Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said on Wednesday that the focus now is to build more centres to cater for the growing demand of vocational training.Speaking on Wednesday when inaugurating a new VETA training centre in Coast region, Mr Pinda said the vocational training will cater for the growing demand for employment opportunities that the formal sector cannot fulfill.
“In the 70s, the formal sector was depended upon to provide job opportunities once students completed their studies, but this is not the case any more, hence the government’s decision to stop upgrading technical and vocational training centres and build more centres,” he said.
Mr Pinda said every year more than 500,000 standard seven, form four and six leavers do not get a chance to continue with higher education, noting that if not exposed to any form of technical training, the lot gets into the job market without any skills.”This is one of the major reason we have youths migrating to cities and the result is, among others, increased number of criminal offences, more street children and beggars and proliferation of drug abuse,” he explained.
He said it was for this reason that the government saw the need to have an ultra modern VETA training centre in every region, a move that the government is close to achieving, except for the newly formed regions of Simiyu, Katavi, Geita and Njombe.Mr Pinda said it was also the government’s intention to have a VETA training centre in every district in the country to enroll more students who for one reason or another cannot continue with their high education.
The premier noted that development does not only depend on people being employed in the formal sector, but also a skilled labour force.”Technical training is very important in bringing about development in society and the nation’s economy and in realizing this, the government is striving to make sure all those who cannot continue with formal education, join vocational training centres,” he explained.
Mr Pinda noted that countries that have managed to develop have embarked on improving their technical and vocational training centres, citing countries such as South Korea and Canada as examples.The Prime Minister noted that once the government achieves its objective in enrolling more students in technical and vocational training centres and imparting them with quality trainings, the country will reap immensely in the East African Community (EAC) job market.
VETA Coast Training Centre was built by a loan from South Korea of 18 million US dollars (about 22bn/-) when the contract was signed in 2005. The South Korean government contributed 80 per cent while the government of Tanzania contributed 20 per cent.
However, due to construction costs’ going up the government of Tanzania was forced to add 40 per cent of its contribution, as stipulated in the agreement.The loan is being spent on construction of three vocational training centres: Coast, Lindi and Manyara and one Information and Communication Technology (ICT) institute in Kipawa, Dar es Salaam.The cost of construction and installation of teaching facilities and equipment for the Coast Vocational Training Centre was 5.44bn/-.
By ROSE ATHUMANI, Tanzania Daily News
