Technical school contributes to building up Bulolo

Bulolo Technical School manager Berom Yawal

A final school fee cheque of K80, 000 was recently released to Bulolo Technical School to complete a total of K126, 000 for the district’s capacity building programme funded by Bulolo District Joint District Planning and Budget Priorities Committee.

Currently the education reform has changed the status of all vocational schools into technical schools, with Bulolo Vocational now known as Bulolo Technical School.

This year BTS has enrolled 290 students into various trades such as:

a) Tourism and hospitality;

b) Carpentry and joinery;

c) Brick laying;

d) Plumbing;

e) Motor mechanical;

f)  Heavy equipment fitter;

g) Panel beating and spray painting;

h) Business studies;

I)  IT – computing; and

J) Office administration.

By next year the BTS will link up with Mt Hagen Technical to take in continuing BTS students for National Certificate (NC1) programmes for courses such as heavy equipment fitter.

Also this year BTS has enrolled about 84 students under the Bulolo District rural capacity building programme which covers most of the courses mentioned above.

Bulolo District JDP and BPC Chairman Hon. Sam Basil has approved the programme, which saw 14 students from the six local level governments in Bulolo District.

The program has cost the district K126, 000 from the district services improvement programme (DSIP) funds.

Mr Basil said the capacity building of rural LLGS through human resource was very important at this stage when much of the DSIP funds were used to equip the rural LLGs with machinery, vehicles, electricity, communication networks and road infrastructure.

A similar programme has been struck with the Wau Small Scale Mining Center with course participants being fed through the rural LLGs.

Balob Teachers’ College in Lae will also engage in a similar arrangement to train rural teachers for Bulolo District.