NEWMOUNT TRAINS APPENTICES IN MINE MAINTENANCE (PAGE 35)

FIFTEEN unemployed youth from the Asutifi District in the Brong Ahafo Region, including four females, have been selected to undergo a four-year mine maintenance apprenticeship training at the Newmont Ghana Gold Limited at Kenyasi.
The Newmont apprenticeship programme has been designed to support and supplement the current recruitment and to provide training development opportunities for Ahafo Mine project communities.
The 14 beneficiaries were selected from among a list of 50 after a rigorous process, including mechanical aptitude test, mathematics, abstract reasoning, reading, comprehension, spelling and hands-on mechanical aptitude assessment.
They are being trained at a cost of approximately US$ 17,000 each for a duration of four years.
The selection process was also based on modalities contained in the Ahafo Social Responsibility Agreement, which ensures that all the 10 communities where the company is operating, had a fair and equitable opportunity to have their people selected without compromising the quality of the intake.
Currently, a group of 28 young people, who were selected last year, are undergoing the same apprenticeship training, and upon completion of their four-year programme, they would be awarded City and Guilds of London Institute certificate.
At a ceremony to matriculate the apprentices, the General Manager, Environment and Social Responsibility of Ahafo Mine, Mr Dan V. Michaelsen, explained that the NGGL realised that apprenticeship was an excellent opportunity to develop local skills to meet the rising demands of its operations.
He said the apprenticeship training programme was started during the construction phase of the mine to address some major mine operation challenges facing the company in terms of qualified personnel for the plant.
According to Mr Michaelsen, the introduction of the programme provided the company with three distinctive advantages, namely deepening its social responsibility commitments to its host communities, helping in meeting the company’s commitment of developing the people in pursuit of excellence and offering a unique opportunity of meeting Newmont’s human resource needs.
The Maintenance Training Superintendent of the company, Mr Eddy Durfee, stated that his outfit considered the programme a worthwhile investment and also as a further proof of its value to develop the people in the operational area to pursue excellence in whatever endeavour it chose.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ms Joyce Aryee, stated that the global economy was becoming a skills-based one and that the survival of today’s youth in such a system depended largely on the set of skills they were able to acquire.
She said the situation in the mining industry was no different, as it required a large skilled workforce to stay on the top of the competition.
Ms Aryee stressed that mining companies had to always grapple with the challenge of providing employment opportunities to their host communities, when, in fact, there were sometimes just a few people with those set of skills required to work in such a highly specialised sector.
She commended Newmont for the institution of the apprenticeship programme to provide the young men and women with life-time skills that would make them competitive not only in the mining industry, but also beyond it.