Youths are said to be the future leaders of the country; hence, the need to equip them with various skills in different trainings conducted by the Technical Enterpreneurial and Vocational Training (TEVET) for them to effectively contribute towards the 2063 Malawi Agendas for the meaningful developments.
A TEVET level 3 auto electrical student Hannah Jambo told ProjectM that she never thought of doing vocational training in her life.
She said her ambition was to study journalism as her first choice seconded by either nursing or teaching which she said her elder sisters are working respectively.
She said after completing her Form Four at Bangula Private Secondary School in 2016 she applied for journalism, nursing and teaching but I was not successful.
“I gave up and resorted just to stay at home with parents,” she said.
Jambo revealed that their fourth born Agnes a nurse by professional asked her to join Technical Colleges for vocational training than just staying idle in the village helpless.
According to Jambo, she accepted and enrolled with Combon College for auto electrical course unwillingly just to fullfil what her sister advised her.
“Classes were disrupted with the outbreak of Covid-19 which also fueled her not to have interest in the training,” she said.
Jambo added that things changed for the better from nowhere she received the Level 1 results.
She has since hailed her male students for encouraging her not to give up but to continue working hard like them.
The Level 3 student lamented that she has not secured any company attachments during her all three levels of vocational training which she was her challenge.
She is urging other girls who have Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) not always aim for white collar jobs which she described as they take long time to secure fulltime employment.
Speaking to her mother, Annie Owen Jambo said she was not comfortable for her daughter to join the male dominated career saying she prefered if she could have followed her elder sisters.
She is calling other parents or guardians to allow their girl children to also go for vocational skills which are male dominated without discouraging them.
“The vocational trainings are automatically self-employment courses which one does not wait to be employed,” said Jambo.
In an interview with TEVET Authority Executive Director Elwin Sichiola says the Malawi Government with assistance from the World Bank has secured 100 million US dollars for a project dubbed”Skills for a Vabrant Economy” (SAVE) for a five-year project.
He said of the 100 million USA Dollars 50 million USA Dollars is a loan and the remaining 50 million US Dollars is a grant.
He said SAVE Project is aimed at revamping technical skills and labour market targeting girls who have MSCE regardless of their grades.
Sichiola revealed that the statistics are very clear that the majority of students in the technical colleges in Malawi are boys such as in auto mobile mechanic trade hence the implementation of the initiative to encourage more girls to get into the male dominated trade.
“It is our sincere hope that more girls will graduate in most male dominated trade by the end of this SAVE Project targetting about 65,000 girls,” said the Executive Director.
