Stakeholders on job creation soon'

President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday hinted that government would soon hold a stakeholders summit on curricula building and job creation opportunities to ensure employment after school. The stakeholders, he said, are made up of authorities of all universities, Polytechnics, the curriculum development Division of the Ghana Education Service, Ghana Employers Association and Entrepreneurs. President Mahama gave this hint when he addressed the youth of Benin on job creation, as part of his two-day state visit to Benin. The meeting, which attracted numerous students, was to encourage them to take courses that would offer them job opportunities after school. President Mahama said apart from restructuring the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA), government would also empower the Small and Medium Entrepreneurs, since they served as the major drivers of the national economy. He said government would also strengthen the Technical and Vocational Training Institutes, as they had the potential of turning out middle level Technicians to handle some of the economic influential sectors. President Mahama encouraged the people of Benin to adopt interventions such as labour intensive public works policy, where job could be created for people who had no formal education to ensure equity in the distribution of the national cake. "In Ghana, jobs such as sanitation and sweeping of roads are given to elderly women, jobs that could have been given to organisations with vehicles to carry out." He said although unemployment is not peculiar to only African countries, leaders needed to work extra hard to create more jobs to commensurate for the population explosion in the continent.

President Mahama, who attributed the social destabilization in Northing Africa, which became known as the "Arab Spring”, was a result of those countries inability to create jobs in consonance with growing population in that region and appealed to other African countries to develop multiple job creation opportunities. "Youth unemployment is a national challenge, in view of the fact that it has caused what is now known as the Arab Spring in North African countries recently," the President added. On integration and regional cooperation, President Mahama promised to uphold all the commitments that Ghana's first President Dr Kwame Nkrumah made with Benin since independence by offering the necessary support for mutual benefit. He said it was regrettable that while the free movement of people in the West African sub region was effectively working, the movement of goods and services continued to be abysmal. continued