Accra, May 31, GNA - Mr Kingsley Koranteng Asiedu, West Africa Regional Representative of City and Guilds of London, one of the worlds's leading vocational and technical awarding organizations, on Monday remind ed government to pay more attention to technical and vocational education to guarantee the needed economic growth and development in Ghana.

"It is sad to note that as a nation, we do not have any qualificatio n credit framework to enable us to map technical awards to academic awards. This explains why technical graduates are frustrated by employers placing them wrongly with inappropriate salary and job levels," he said.

Mr Asiedu said some employers discriminated against technical and vocational graduates, while some educational institutions did not accept qualifications from graduates of technical and vocational institutions. At a press briefing to educate the media on the need for governmen t to adopt policies that promote technical and vocational education, he sai d without technicians and vocational skills workers, the nation's developme nt would come to a standstill.

"We all want to go to the University yet we want to enjoy electricity, we want water to flow through our taps, we want our telephon es to work constantly, we want quality internet services; the question is wh ere will the technicians who are in the majority in these industries, come fr om to provide these services?" he asked.

Relating the importance of technical and vocational education to the oil discovery, he said the bulk of employees in the oil industry were technicians who did electrical maintenance, mechanical maintenance, instrumentation and process technicians, and noted that none of the Technical training institutions or Polytechnics were training technicians for oil and gas-related jobs. "We are ready to partner oil and gas companies, to train providers so that they would use the City and Guilds training and certification to equ ip our youth with the needed skills to ensure that they benefit from the various job opportunities that would be available in the oil industry," h e added.

He complained specifically about the refusal of some government heal th institutions to accept health care professionals trained by his instituti on and said the Nurses and Midwifery Council was frustrating such Health Car e graduates with the mindset that they were going to compete with the nurse s. "The Health Care Professionals are not nurses; they provide auxilia ry health care services to support nurses and doctors to deliver better services in giving patients total care," he explained.

Mr Asiedu appealed to government to establish councils that would supervise practitioners in the care, hair and beauty industries since the City and Guilds had trained many professionals who had set up their salon s providing employment to many young people. He further suggested that government should come out with a techni cal and vocational levy to help develop and improve technical and vocational education in the country.