Employment Act; first of its kind in our history – NDC.

Unemployment is one of the major challenges facing almost all economies around the globe especially those in Sub-Sharan Africa. In Ghana, political parties in every four years make beautiful policies that are designed with the intention of providing decent jobs for the teeming unemployed graduates turned-out in our tertiary institutions annually.

This year being an election year, is no different. The National Democratic Congress (NDC) in their 2020 manifesto stated that when voted into power come December 7, they will pass the Employment Act to provide a comprehensive framework for job creation and labour market statistics. This Act, when passed will be “the first of its kind in our history”, according to the NDC.

The proposed employment Act has three major areas of concern; provision of a labour market information system, posting of trained labour economists to various district assemblies, and an integrated employment framework for job creation by the various district assemblies.

The Labour Market Information System (LMIS), the NDC stated, “… will be administered by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the Ministry of Employment in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies. This will measure the number of new jobs created through the periodic release of labour market reports similar to the monthly inflation reports released by GSS”.

The LMIS sounds pleasing to the ear as it will make monitoring or tracking of the jobs created by various governments every month easy so that the citizens can testify whether the jobs captured in this bulletin have actually been created or otherwise. This I think will be better than ‘the Green Book’ launched by the same party in 2016. Over the years, political parties often quote figures of jobs purported to have been created which many Ghanaians often express doubts.

Furthermore, as part of the proposed employment Act by the next NDC government, the party said in their 2020 manifesto that “Labour economists will be trained and posted to all regional offices to work with district assemblies to track employment creation and monitor the impact of central and local Government policies on job creation”.

It is normally the case that monitoring follows the implementation of every policy. However, proper monitoring and evaluation of policies have been a major challenge in Ghana. It is very difficult for one to access the actual impact of policies rolled out by various governments in Ghana. If policies are properly evaluated, it will help the country to know whether the policies are yielding the right results. The only concern is; does it mean Ghana does not have enough labour economist?

Finally, the NDC said “All district assemblies will be required to have Integrated Employment Frameworks in their medium-term and annual development plans, with an emphasis on private-sector job creation. This will be based on a renewed effort to promote local economic development (LED) based on a new framework that makes aggressive development in, and maintenance of infrastructure the centrepiece of economic and social development of every district in Ghana”.

With regards to the impact the pandemic has had on the world of work, the next NDC Government said it “will formalise the remote working opportunities created by the crisis by allowing some public sector workers whose work do not always require a physical presence in their offices to work from home.

“Such workers will only report to the office periodically, with emphasis on output and productivity and not necessarily their actual presence in their offices, which often requires long and costly travels to and from those offices. The private sector will be encouraged to explore the advantages of telecommuting and digitization”.

The leading opposition party also promises to create a minimum of 250,000 jobs per year under the ‘Edwuma Pa’ programme over the next 4 years. As part of strategies to meet this job creation target, the NDC indicates that it will provide the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) beneficiaries permanent and decent jobs.

NABCO programme is a government initiative to address graduate unemployment to solve social problems. The focus of the initiative is on solving public service delivery in health, education, agriculture, technology, governance and drive revenue mobilization and collection. According to the New Patriotic Party (NPP), it has created 100,000 jobs under the NABCO program.

Continuation of policies started by a previous government by the current one has been a major challenge that has hampered the progress to the country. Several infrastructures are left uncompleted around the country just because the party that initiated those projects have been voted out of power. It sounds good to hear parties wanting to continue projects and programs that were started by the previous governments. But how credible are these promises?