Deputy Finance Minister, Dr John Kumah, has lauded the intervention programs by government in the past five years in addressing youth unemployment in the country.
Dr Kumah revealed that these interventions have been effective in helping create jobs for the youth, further reducing unemployment rate in the country. He explained that although there have been other programs similar to the YouStart initiative to be launched in June, these programs have helped in improving the lives of the youth.
“People always have legitimate concerns and some of these criticisms help to improve the programs. I believe that all the interventions that government has rolled out in respect of job creation in our country for the past five years have been very effective…
In fact, unemployment came down to below 7% [but] we had COVID coming in and people losing their jobs and we reversing a lot of things in our country. We saw One District, One Factory creating sustainable jobs across the country…”
John Kumah
Dr Kumah indicated that although programs such as 1D1F, PFJ and others have helped, government is looking at things in a “more sustainable and scalable way than just temporary arrangements that come in as a stopgap measure to hold the front”, hence the YouStart initiative.
Elaborating on the YouStart program by government, Dr Kumah expressed that it is a flagship program by President Akufo-Addo to address youth unemployment in the country on a more “sustainable basis”. He explained that per statistics from the Ghana Statistical Service, out of the 30 million population between ages 15 and 35, about 11.7 million people are very young and 19.7% of them are unemployed.
“So, His Excellency the President wants to address this problem on a more sustainable basis that is why we are introducing the YouStart. Of course, government has done a lot of other interventions in the youth front.”
John Kumah
NABCo to be transitioned into the YouStart
Dr Kumah highlighted that government will transition the Nation Builders’ Corps (NABCo) into the YouStart initiative. He noted that the idea is to find a more sustainable alternative to the NABCo which ended in October 2021.
“We have already engaged the NABCo secretariat, and there has to be a more sustainable way of looking at NABCo. As we said, NABCo was for a 3-year period and so we have to have an alternative. Going forward, how do we make sure we support these young people who now have experience, ideas and creativity to have access to further training and working capital to be able to start their own businesses and scale up?”
John Kumah
The Deputy Finance Minister expressed that although there are several initiatives on the youth front to create job opportunities, most of these interventions are usually “not coordinated from one ministry to another or one agency” to the other. To address the situation, he stated that the YouStart is going to “be inter-ministerial at the highest level and inter-agency”.
“So, all the various youth agencies, the National Youth Authority, YEA… The agencies that look at youth employment and capacity building and opportunities for young people will all be rallied together and then we see how we can maximize our resources and create economic opportunities for young people.”
John Kumah
Dr Kumah disclosed that President Akufo-Addo will in this month of June, launch the YouStart program. He however noted that ahead of the launch, government is undertaking a lot of stakeholder engagements.
“Because it’s inter-ministerial, we just completed the local assemblies’ engagements with all the MMDCEs across the country. We are also going to engage members of parliament, CSOs, student organisations, even editors and the media. We want to rally everybody around the issue of youth job creation opportunities.”
John Kumah
READ ALSO: Blockchain Technology: A Key to Ghana’s Transformation
