Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has announced that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has successfully generated an unprecedented 2.1 million jobs for the youth over the past seven years.
Dr. Bawumia acknowledged that despite this accomplishment, there is still much work to be done, especially considering Ghana’s growing youth population and how many young people still need employment opportunities.
At the launch of the Youth Employment Agency’s (YEA) latest initiative, the Business and Employment Assistance Programme in Sunyani on Monday, December 11, Dr Bawumia emphasised the government’s dedication to job creation.
He asserted that the launch of this program, along with other government initiatives, underscores their commitment and has created more jobs than any previous government in Ghana’s history.
“This programme (Business and Employment Assistance Programme) is a testament to our government’s focus on job creation. Unemployment was a real problem and we even had the unemployment graduate association. Our focus, therefore, was to improve job creation through the public and private sector,” he said.
“So far, we have created in the private and public sectors 2.1 million jobs; 975 by the private sector and 1.2 million by the public sector. The data is there and this cannot be disputed. I can say with all humility that no government in the history of the 4th Republic has done this (created 1.2m jobs) and this cannot be challenged. It is the hard fact,” Dr. Bawumia added.
Despite the remarkable creation of 1.2 million jobs, Bawumia emphasised that additional efforts will be made to generate more employment opportunities for the youth in Ghana, given the country’s expanding youth population.
“We have done a lot in terms of job creation but we still have a lot more to do because the youth constitute the majority of the population.
Even though we have recruited 2.1m, we still have to do more and we will do more because there are many more youth who need jobs. About 70% of Ghana’s population is the youth” he said.