The Public Relations Officer of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Awal Mohammed, has acknowledged that the turn out for the YEA job and career fair was overwhelming.
Speaking on the turnout at the event, he revealed the YEA was expecting a total number of 5,000 applicants but had a rather doubled turnout.
He, however, stated that despite the chaos that took place due to the large numbers, the event was a successful one.
“I think it was largely successful. It being the first time it’s happening in this country should tell you that it was successful. The turnout was very massive and we did not anticipate these numbers even though we knew that a lot of Ghanaians will turn out to come for the program. But I believe that the turnout was overwhelming. It was generally a successful programme.
“Initially we were estimating around 5,000 people looking at the kind of publicity that went out for this programme. It turned out that…the number rather doubled”.
Awal Mohammed
Touching on the YEA’s preparedness to cope with the extent of the youth unemployment problem in the country, Mr. Mohammed disclosed that they are liaising with the private sector to provide more avenues for the youth.
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Private sector to broaden employment avenues
Mr. Mohammed further averred that since their module is not enough, they came to a decision to involve the private sector in this employment programme to get more people on board.
“If you look at what we are supposed to do as a Youth Employment Agency, looking at the legislative instrument, 99% of what we are basically supposed to do is to give the youth of the country opportunities.
“We knew that the number will become overwhelming in the coming years and that is why we added the private sector. Also, we knew the number in the coming years cannot be contained by only modules and paying them allowances. We involved them [private sector] so that even though we have our own modules we will still be able to get a lot more of the youth employed”.
Awal Mohammed
He, moreover, stated that looking at the work of the YEA since 2006, the employment provided is not very much sustainable so they are diversifying it in order to get sustainable job opportunities for the youth.
Agencies request for workers from YEA
Mr. Mohammed said once an individual is with the YEA, there are a lot of agencies both local and foreign ones who call in to request for a particular number of workers they need and these also provide employment avenues.
“We get these requests a lot. They ask us, do you have these number of people that we need? There are a lot of job portals and agencies who exploit the youth in terms of getting them employment opportunities and they are underpaid. So, we set out to solve these issues”.
Awal Mohammed
Mr. Awal indicated that the programme was also to capture some specific people for the private firms which the employers have indicated that they need. He said they are going to gather these potential persons and put them together on a job portal the YEA has and also train them to acquire some skills.
