The ILO Skill Up project is rounding up paper works to extend its skills development instruction to the oil and gas sector. The agenda is to position Ghanaians to take up leading roles in an industry largely dominated by expatriates.
The skills development strategy is to promote the implementation of the Local Content Act in Ghana’s upstream oil and gas sector for sustainable development and to maximum economic and social benefits for the good of the economy.
Speaking to GBC Business News, the National Project Coordinator, ILO SKILL-UP, Frank Adetor, said the skills development programme encompasses all levels in the oil and gas upstream, Mid-stream and downstream sector to provide more job opportunities to Ghanaians to make the Act a reality.
He said, “we have in December 2020 put together the membership of its member to constitute the sector skill body for the Oil and Gas sector in Ghana. It is a very important structure because of the implication of skills for the Oil and gas sector, which is dominated by foreign companies. So we felt that in order to realise a dream of local content, it is important to get a body that will drive the skills development in that sector. It had been set up, we are working to finalise the skills development strategy within the oil and gas sector which will be ready for publication in September. This is quite a great stride we have made in terms of skills development initiative. We are looking at all the levels of managerial, technical and low level skills.”
Mr Adetor said the Accelerated Oil and Gas programme sponsored by the Norwegian government will position Ghanaians to take up leading roles in the oil gas sector.
The Norwegian government has so far dedicated 4 million dollars to the success of the programme.
He intimated, “to be able to accelerate the development of the sector we need the appropriate skills and usually, these skills are tapped from expatriates which is not too good for us. So we also want to retain some of the gains from the oil and gas sector, the discovery we have made should benefit Ghanaians in terms of renumeration to Ghanaians that will be employed on the risk and other areas that fall within the value chain of the Oil and Gas sector”.
BY: MABEL ADORKOR ANNANG.
