The Empowerment for Life (E4life), a subsidiary of the Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA) has made a passionate appeal to government to revamp the Pong-Tamale Vocational school.
The E4life is also asking the Ghana Education Service and the Savelugu/Nanton Municipal Assembly to show keen interest in revamping the school to help train the teeming unemployed.
The school was established in the 1980s as a Boys industrial school under the Social Welfare Department of the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection.
The school started with a student population of about 50 and increased it substantially in the subsequent years. In the early 1990s, the school’s enrollment was a little over 150 students, with a reasonable number of teaching staff.
The school, which was offering carpentry, masonry and tailoring, was first in the region providing accommodation to students within and outside the Savelugu municipality.
Presenting a finding on the state of the school at the second quarter of GDCA media review meeting in Tamale, the E4life Coordinator in charge of the Savelugu and Kumbungu districts, Abdallah Mohammed attributed the current state of the school to successive governments’ failure to place students through the computerized selection and placement system.
Inadequate teachers as well as the absence of a P.T.A and a board were also identified as contributing factors to the woes of the defunct Pong-Tamale vocational school.
The E4life’s findings indicated that the youth in the area wanted the facility to be used as a vocational training center.
UNICEF in 2007 intervened by enrolling 150 youth for six months and provided teaching and learning materials, food stuffs, and soap to train the youth in carpentry, masonry and tailoring.
UNICEF’s intervention did not salvage the school from collapsing as a result of government’s lack of interest. Even the committee set up to look into revamping the school failed to come out with a workable plan.
A meeting held for assembly members, chiefs and elders in the community, the head master and the director of social welfare to deliberate on the revamping did not also yield any positive results, hence, its temporary closedown compelling the youth to migrate to the south in search of non-existent jobs
