THE Heart Trust/NTA’s National Tool and Engineering Institute (NTEI) yesterday held its first annual trainee achievement ceremony, awarding 14 students.

The top awardees were Steve Hardware, a level-two student who received the awards for excellence and electro mechanics. Also Omar Wright, who received the awards for industrial electronics and for the most outstanding level-three student. Other awardees included students from levels one to three, who excelled in the subjects of air conditioning, refrigeration, electro mechanics, industrial electronics, mechanical maintenance and welding.

Guest speaker, Gossett Oliver, dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Computing, University of Technology, charged the students to achieve greatness through persistence and hard work. Such qualities, he said, are found in great Jamaicans, citing musician Bob Marley, scientist TP Lecky and West Indies cricketer Michael Holdings, amongst others.

He said he too was a trainee in an institution similar to NTEI but persevered and excelled to reach his current position.

And Donald Foster, national programmes director for the Heart Trust/NTA, emphasised the need for students to build employability skills. These skills, he said, were developed by striving to perfection both in deportment and in job efficiency.

Robert Gregory, the executive director of the Heart Trust/NTA, told students that education and training was vital to achieving national transformation and that the NTEI was contributing to this change.

The NTEI provides technical and vocational training in the fields of industrial maintenance and tool making. Formerly called Tool Makers Institute, under the direction of the Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation (JIDC), it changed directorship in the 1980s under Jamaica Promotions and then in 1995 under the current directorship of the Heart Trust/NTA.

Here, Omar Wright receives his award for most outstanding level-three student, from Donald Foster, national programmes director of the Heart Trust/NTA.