The SMIDO has a similar partnership agreement with the Kofi Anan ICT resource centre to provide light industrial technological machines at the Magazine premises to promote efficiency in their businesses and also equip them with computers to offer basic IT education.
The move by the SMIDO and its development partners is to ensure that the artisans are abreast with the current technological approach to repairing modern vehicles instead of relying on their old methods which is gradually killing the industry.
The President of SMIDO, George Asamoah Amankwa who said disclosed this at the official launching of the "Suame Magazine goes ICT road show" yesterday said the Magazine which has over the years employed large percentage of the youth in Ghana stand at a possible risk of collapse due to the introduction of highly sophisticated vehicles and their parts on the market which artisans have no knowledge of.
"It is to arrest this situation that we have taken this bold initiative to have both SMIDO as our development organization and ICT project to encourage ourselves to start with the basic computing as part of the process of establishing the Suame Tech Automatics Engineering Institute where vehicles diagnostics would be learnt using the computer"
Mr. Amankwa said to further improve upon the skills of artisans SMIDO is negotiating with the Ministry of Trade and Industry to support the establishment of the Suame Tech Automatics Engineering Institute which is estimated to cost GH¢550,000.
He also said the Organisation was working out a special financial product with UNIBANK for its members and artisans at the magazine. Through this initiative, he said they will guarantee for members to access credits from the bank to expand their businesses.
The Director General of the Kofi Anan ICT Centre, Mrs. Dorothy Gordon disclosed that the training of artisans and other workers at the Magazine is a first step towards making the Suame magazine an ICT industrial hub in the West African sub-region.
She said the establishment of the Suame Tech Automatics Engineering Institute which is in collaboration with her outfit is to ensure that artisans who enroll in the institution come out well equipped with adequate knowledge in IT and also certificates which would enable them work in other industries in the country.
She assured that the Kofi Anan ICT training centre will continue to support members of SMIDO to be abreast with the IT in order to meet the challenges of the modern technological in the execution of their businesses to safe it from total collapse.
Member of Parliament of Suame and also Minister of State in-charge of Parliamentary Affairs Kyei Mensah Bonsu expressed the need for artisans in the country to let formal education be a priority to them, noting that "there are some artisans here who are doing relatively well in their area of operations but due to limited formal education they do not realize the need to bring improvement into their busineses", calling on masters to put in place criteria for selecting apprentices for job training, saying that such criteria must first consider the educational background of apprentices before admmitting them.
credit :statesman
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