Ignatius Barfour Awuah, the Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, has starkly revealed that there is a tendency of hikes in unemployment as a result of government’s free SHS policy and the planned TVET for Senior High Technical Schools.
According to the sector minister, the growing number of graduates annually which stands at over 1.2 million from senior high and other institutions has necessitated this.
Delivering a keynote speech at the launch of a report by the World Bank on youth unemployment in Ghana, Mr. Awuah said, government’s efforts have been intensified following the high patronage of its Free SHS intervention and expected increase in enrolment into TVET institutions following the promise of making it free.
“The issue of unemployment is expected to grow in the short to medium term due to the success of the government’s free SHS program and the planned TVET for Senior High Technical Schools. More than 1.2 million young people will be graduating annually from second cycle institutions to enroll in tertiary education or training or move directly into the labour markets.
“This is an increase from the 800,000 students enrolled in secondary schools in 2016. Efforts must therefore be doubled to ensure that employment opportunities exist for the products of our education and training institutions”.
Agribusiness has become a staple ingredient in the fight against unemployment and Mr. Awuah was quick to ride on the success of it under the current administration’s intervention programs to that effect.
“To this end, the government is promoting agribusiness and entrepreneurship to make them attractive to the youth. The cassava enterprise project, national entrepreneurship plan and presidential pitch are key examples of some of the interventions the government is using to provide jobs for young persons. These efforts are in addition to traditional employment opportunities in the formal sectors of the economy.”
Revealing a key ace under the sleeves of government to maintain strong collaborations with all its partners, local and international, the Employment Minister noted, this is to ensure that more jobs are created to employ young people.
He also cited planting for food and jobs and 1D 1F programmes as key initiatives the government is undertaking to ensure that jobs are created within the private sector.
Elsewhere, the former National Youth Authority chief executive officer, Ras Mubarak in listing the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) solution to the unemployment issue in Ghana noted that the Youth Enterprise Support Fund (YES) under the Mahama administration would have yielded needed results given the time.
“When we were in government, what we had was age restrictions. So, the YES was strictly and exclusively to support young people in the area of entrepreneurship. That has changed very sadly because what the NPP has done is to remove the age restriction to allow just about anybody to apply for support so it’s no longer a youth program. We had the youth in mind and our approach was to support young people with startup capital and we also recognized that entrepreneurship is the way to go.
“We needed to move away from the culture of depending on public sector to absorb and recruit young people who were graduating from our various universities in the country and for that reason we needed to provide funding that will support young people who want to be their own job givers instead of job seekers”.
