Competency-based training for 22 vocational heads

Daily Graphic, pg. 11, Thursday, Nov. 20/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho, Peduase

THE hospitality industry in the country is characterised by intense competition as tourists become more sensitive to quality customer service delivery.
Tourists have the options of choosing from alternative destinations, facilities and services.
The industry provides services such as travel and tour, front office operations, food and beverage service and sales, housekeeping, heritage and eco-tourism, interpretation services, leisure, sports and recreation and event support management. It is envisaged to become the largest employer in the next few years.
This, therefore, calls for a training system to be established to support high quality service in all areas of the hospitality industry.
The industry, which is the third largest foreign exchange earnerin the country, employs about 200,000 of the country’s workforce. Women are said to constitute 70 per cent of the workforce in the industry and, therefore, has the potential of changing the status of many Ghanaians especially, women employed in the industry.
The industry is, however, bedeviled with challenges including inadequate travel and accommodation infrastructure, shortage of trained professionals and skilled personnel, low productivity and high cost of service delivery, poor quality of service, inadequate safety and security facilities and weak training infrastructure, among others.
It is as a result of the need for training to address some of these challenges that the Vocational Training for Females’ (VTF) with support from the Japanesse International Cooperation Agency (JICA), on Monday organised a two-day Competency-Based Training (CBT) for 22 instructors from vocational institutions from across the country at Peduase in the Eastern Region.
The training also formed part of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) support project being implemented by the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) as part of curriculum reforms in vocational and technical institutions across the country.
The Executive Director of the Ghana Tourists Board, Mr Martin Mireku, in a keynote address, said the need for a curriculum reform in the hospitality industry had become necessary due to globalisation.
He said, “for Ghana’s tourism and hospitality industry to become competitive, it should aim at attaining international quality standards”.
He said for that to be possible, the training of people in the hospitality industry should follow the international trend of basing qualifications on performance standards rather than on the passing of courses and examinations.
He said tourist arrivals have increased significantly over the past decades recording an increase of 18 per cent in 2006.
According to him, it is projected that the country would earn $1.5 billion from the industry by the year 2010.
Mr Mireku, however, said Ghana’s tourism industry was marked by a critical shortage of skilled and service-friendly personnel at the operations, supervisory, and management levels.
He said it was unfortunate that the country did not have any well-organised training system neither did it have a national performance standards or quality assurance measures for training in place.
He said the training of personnel in the industry should be based on what employers want their employees to exhibit at the work place which should form the basis of what was taught, learned and assessed for the purposes of certification.
Mr Mireku who called for a mandatory on-the-job training for personnel, also stressed the need to introduce a system of accreditation to regulate training for the industry to address those shorfalls in the training of personnel for the industry.
The acting Executive Director, COTVET, Mr Asamoah Duodu, in an address, said the government was promoting technical and vocational education under the new educational reform with the view of equipping the youth with employable skills to reduce poverty and creating wealth.
The Project Administrator of JICA/TVETs projects, Mr Yoshio Ishiyama said a quality human resource base was essential for nation building, and noted that Japan “do not have rich natural resources like gold and oil as Ghana does, so we educated and trained our people. This gave us the foundation for economic growth”.
He commended the VTF for the initiative and indicated that the initiative could only be fully operationalised depending on the commitment of the individuals involved.
The Executive Director of M-Plaza, a hospitality industry, Mr Edmund Ofosu-Yeboah expressed concern that the country had not been successful in getting the needed manpower to operate the industry that met the required standards.