About 350,000 public sector jobs created in 2years for unemployed youth in Ghana, Vice President Bawumia discloses

According to him, the government has given clearance for people to be recruited as nurses, teachers, as well as personnel at the Forestry Commission and security services in the country.

Dr Bawumia said this while speaking at the launch of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) Job Centre at the Bank of Ghana Auditorium at the University of Ghana in Accra on Wednesday, 2 October 2019.

He said, “We’ve implemented a Nation Builders Corps (NABCo) which has employed 100,000 graduates, who, otherwise, would have been sitting at home and this is a step in building the job skills of our graduates to be absorbed into the workforce.”

Adding that “The available data shows that recruitment and financial clearances for the security services, nurses, teachers, Forestry [Commission] and NABCo and so on, the last two years alone, we’ve employed 350,000 people in the public sector.”

Dr Bawumia further noted that the government has resolved to help train nurses by restoring the nurse trainee allowance, restoring the teacher trainee allowance and abolishing the fees of postgraduate medical students.

He then noted that the government recognises that the public sector alone cannot absorb all the unemployed youth and, hence, the administration will as well rely on the private sector.

“This means that we have to improve the business environment. Fundamentally, we have to reduce the cost of doing business and the government has been on this particular path in the last couple of years, and we’ve done a number of things to reduce the cost of doing business,” he said.

About the YEA Job Centre

The YEA was established under the Youth Employment Act 2015 (Act 887), to oversee the development, coordination, supervision and facilitation of employment for the youth and related matters in Ghana.

It seeks to address the ever-increasing problem of unemployment among the youth, perceived to be a potential threat to National Security in 2005.

It was officially inaugurated in October 2006 and functioned under the Office of the President without legal backing.

The primary goal of the YEA Job Centre is to strategically position the agency to serve as a one-stop-shop to provide skills and connect job seekers to employers aimed at addressing the unemployment concerns of the youth of the country.