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About 840 Ghanaians have so far been engaged in various capacities in Ghana�s oil and gas sector. 660 expatriates have also been employed in the sector bringing the total number of people hired since the country started oil production in commercial quantities to 1,500. Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, a Deputy Minister of Energy, who disclosed these on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday, said the afore-mentioned numbers represented 57 and 43 percent of Ghanaians and expatriates respectively engaged in the sector. According to him, his outfit was unable to give the exact number of people from the Western region who had been employed as the information gathering instruments did not make provision for regional considerations. Alhaji Inusah was answering a question from Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Takoradi, who wanted to know the percentage of people from the Western region employed in the current oil and gas industry. The Takoradi MP said people of the region were not getting their fair share of employment although the oil was being produced from the area. Mr. Okyere Darko-Mensah therefore called on government to bring the local content bill to Parliament for passage into an Act to ensure that Ghanaians are offered job opportunities in the oil and gas sector. There have been numerous calls by Ghanaians for more local participation or local content in the oil and gas sector ever since the discovery at jubilee field in Western region. This, according to them, would help avoid the oil curse syndrome which some oil producing countries including Africa�s most populous country, Nigeria had experienced. If it is indeed true that about 57 percent of Ghanaians, out of the total workforce, are engaged in the oil and gas sector, then the country is making some progress as far as the use of local content is concerned. According to Alhaji Fuseini, the country, recognizing the environmental risks associated with the exploitation of the oil and gas resources, had instituted measures to further build and enhance the skills of local people who want to do business in the sector. To this effect, he indicated that the Ministry of Energy, in collaboration with Tullow Ghana, an exploration company in the Jubilee fields, had established Small & Medium-scale Enterprise (SME) skills development center in Takoradi. The Ministry and Tullow, Alhaji Fuseini pointed out, had allocated 40 percent of annual scholarships initiated by the latter to train Ghanaians in UK universities in areas of oil and gas, to the Western Region. The Deputy Minister, who is also the MP for Tamale Central, told Parliament that the Petroleum Commission would have an operational office in Takoradi to further deepen local participation in the oil and gas sector. Alhaji Fuseini said government was in the process of enacting a local content and local participation regulation to safeguard the interest of communities affected directly by the oil and gas activities. That notwithstanding, he said, the Oil & Gas Capacity Building Project (OGCBP), which was being implemented by the Ministry of Energy in partnership with development partners, had strengthened institutions of learning and capacity building such as the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Council for Technical and Vocational, Education and Training (COTVET), Takoradi Technical Institute, Kikam Technical Institute and Regional Maritime University.