Akufo-Addo’s government is effective but not efficient – Bernard Avle

Host of Citi Breakfast Show on CitiFM, Bernard Avle has described the NPP government’s approach to creating jobs and reducing unemployment in its first year as effective but not efficient.

Speaking at a programme to assess President Akufo-Addo’s first year in office organised by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Bernard Avle noted that the government has great ideas and programmes lined-up to solve the high unemployment rate in the country but not taking the rights steps to carry them out.

Expressing his disappointment in the President's failure to tell journalists the number of jobs that have been created in his first year in office, Mr Avle said, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”.

“You don’t have accurate unemployment statistics, you don’t have a job creation tracker on the desk of the president. He doesn’t know how many jobs were created. If you go to countries like US, South Africa, Kenya, they know quarterly the number of new jobs added, we don’t have that,” he added.

He said even though the government is being effective in creating more jobs, it is going about things as past governments have done making their approach inefficient.

Prior to the 2016 December elections, the NPP promised to drastically reduce the rate of unemployment by creating more jobs for the working age group.

The NPP government has introduced the Planting for Food and Jobs, an initiative which is expected to generate about 5000 jobs in the system. Another initiative to generate jobs is the introduction of the One District, One Factory project.