Banking crisis: One District, One Factory will absorb casualties - Bawumia’s Aide

Gideon Boako, a spokesperson for the Vice President, has said the booming businesses under the One District, One Factory initiative by government would largely offer jobs to staff of defunct banks who are unemployed now as a result of BoG’s actions against the failed banks.

According to him, there could have been more casualties as a result of the failures by the banks in 2018, but the government mitigated what could have been severe job crisis in the banking sector.

“…It’s true that a number of these people lost their jobs in the Consolidation of the failed banks and we sympathised with those people. But the truth is that not everybody lost his/her job. Both Commercial bank and the CBG absorbed a chunk of the workers and more of the staff under these banks were retained."

"What we are looking forward is that the government’s One District, One Factory initiative which is picking up and the expansion of the country’s economy would help offer jobs to those who have fallen as casualties in the banking sector reform.”

He was reacting to former president Mahama’s concerns raised on the banking reforms and the massive job losses created by the BoG’s banking cleansing.

“In all, it is estimated that more than 20,000 people have directly lost their jobs as a result of the financial sector shutdowns. The numbers could be even higher when you take into account the indirect job losses occasioned by this crisis,” Mr Mahama said in an interaction which was streamed live on Facebook.

But Dr. Gideon Boako argues the current situation for him, is comparatively better than what occurred under former President John Dramani Mahama government where there were no rescue efforts to retain and save even a single soul of collapsed financial institutions.

Again, he said, unlike Mr. Mahama who couldn’t protect depositors’ funds, who were mostly affected persons from the informal sector, including Charcoal sellers, Koko sellers, traders among others, the NPP government and the BoG gave lifelines to customers by saving every penny of their investments.