BIOSOLIDS ALTERNATIVE
SHARPENING THE SKATES
Large turnout at NVIT for pyrolysis info session / Page 3
Merrittonains of all ages prepping for skating season / Page 9
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MERRITT HERALD FREE
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 • MERRITT NEWSPAPERS
NVIT wins bid for health-care assistant program Michael Potestio THE MERRITT HERALD
Having left home at the age of 13, Keely Weymouth didn’t think she’d be able to take her education to the next level, but thanks to some timely funding, she’ll get the opportunity to do just that. The Ministry of Advanced Education has dolled out a onetime cash injection of $141,000 to the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (NVIT) so it can offer its health-care assistant program this year to 15 students. NVIT president Ken Tourand said this program would not have been offered without this government funding. “We had 12 or 13 [students] that were on wait list hoping that we were going to be able to deliver [the program],” Tourand said. “Now that the funding has come through, that program is a go, so we’ve informed those students.” Weymouth, 19, said she wasn’t aware there was a chance the program might not have gotten off the ground, but is glad the funding came through. “I know a lot of people who are wanting to take it,” she said. So far, 13 students have signed up to take the 35-week program. Weymouth knew she wanted to join the health-care assistant program and find work as a care aid — her goal to work toward becoming a registered nurse. Minister of Advaced Education Andrew Wilkinson said the ministry wants to invest in people improving their skills “so they have the opportunities to build up their lives.”
CITY HALL
Keely Weymouth sits on one of the hospital beds in what will be her classroom for the next 35 weeks as she enters the health-care assistant program at NVIT. It was made possible this year through funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education.
Ken Ostraat has been let go as city’s chief financial officer — more shuffling is in the works Michael Potestio THE MERRITT HERALD
Michael Potestio/Herald
“We want to encourage people to build on those dreams,” Wilkinson said. The health care assistant program trains students to work in care facilities for the elderly, like Gillis House, with a practicum at such local facilities. “They learn everything from blood pressure readings and how to lift elderly people out of their beds [to] wheel chair operation,” Tourand said. The funding will enable the program to train health-care students locally and place them in the workforce locally as well. “Those people will be employed starting next summer in long-term care facilities, and hospitals and the like,” Wilkinsion told report-
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ers at NVIT during a funding announcement Thursday (Sept. 3). “It’s important for us to have people who are in demand locally to be trained locally and that’s exactly what we are doing here,” he said. Wemouth has lived in Merritt for nearly 10 years, and said she’d like to continue living here. She hopes to find a job at Gillis House. There is a demand for healthcare assistants both in the Nicola Valley and the province as a whole, Wilkinson said. “The demand for healthcare assistants to provide the services to people in care facilities, and hospitals and elsewhere is growing at four per cent per
year in the province, and in the Thompson-Okanagan region it’s growing at five per cent per year,” he said. The projected demand suggests the need to provide more health-care assistants in the province. “What we did was we ran a competition in the ministry for grants, which would provide training programs for healthcare assistants,” Wilkinson said, adding that the criteria was the level of demand in a community and whether or not the advanced education ministry wanted to satisfy the demand soon. NVIT was one of the successful applicants that competed for funding after answering a call for proposals from the ministry.
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City council has severed ties with its financial services manager Ken Ostraat and will be making a multitude of other organizational moves. “He’s no longer employed by the city,” chief administrative officer (CAO) Shawn Boven told the Herald. Boven said the city is undertaking an organizational realignment. A job posting is being issued for the newly created position of director of corporate services at the City of Merritt. This director’s responsibilities include shouldering some of the duties of the CAO. The city is also issuing a job posting for Boven’s former job as public works manager. That position is being restructured as director of engineering and development. Managing the public works department will remain part of this position, but the planning and development manager will now report to this director, Boven said. He said currently the planning and development manager reports to the CAO. “There’s lots of direct reports to the CAO and it hasn’t functioned well in the past,” Boven said noting the change up is designed to create a broader organizational depth and a newer senior management team. The city is also issuing a job posting to find a replacement for Ostraat, but hasn’t made a decision as to whether or not it will fill the vacant economic development manager position.
See ‘Boven’ Page 2