By Amoto Ndiewo
Charles Majani, the director of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Technical University of Mombasa has made a clarion call to coastal residents to embrace TVET education.
Talking to KBC TV, Majani said youths who make over 70% of the Kenyan population can get knowledge, skills and employment by embracing TVET education.
‘It is like catching three birds with one trap,’ the director said.
He added that the skills students acquire in TVET can enable students to spring from vocational training institutes in the village, to TVET, higher diploma and university.
‘One with ambition to prosper can rise to a professorship from village polytechnics or TVET,’ he said.
Majani noted that the blue economy was a preserve priority of the coastal people.
‘Residents ought to join Bandari College and Kenya Maritime Academy where they can harness their skills of the blue economy, ’he said.
Majani expressed joy that the jumuiya ya county za pwani are calling for the residents to embrace blue collar jobs instead of the well beaten path of white collar jobs.
Majani noted that it was imperative for Kenya National Qualification Board Authority (KNQBA) to push for equal salary for graduands arguing that the disparity in payment was discriminatory in the job market.
He called on the government to offer quality equipment to TVET as well as quality teachers.
‘What TVETs get is paltry peanuts compared to what the government gifts universities,’ said the director, who called for more funding and the establishment of a fully-fledged Ministry of TVET.
He argued that the current arrangement favours universities yet it is TVETs that supply the bulk of the workplace.
