Government not creating new jobs – Opposition MP

The Member of Parliament for Keta, Richard Quashigah, has said the Akufo-Addo administration is not creating new jobs for unemployed Ghanaians.

He said the government is only filling vacant positions.

His comments follow claims by the Chief Executive Officer of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovative Programme (NEIP), Mr John Kumah, that the President Akufo-Addo-led government has created two million jobs since assuming office per available data and statistics.

According to Mr Kumah, the jobs have been created within the government’s ministries, departments and agencies.

Mr Kumah, who is also a private legal practitioner, noted that the government is determined to reduce the employment problem in the country.

“Figures available show that we have created over two million jobs. The Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations has the data from August 2018,” he said.

“For instance, if you go to the Ministry of Sanitation and Water resources, you will find administration manager, finance manager and so on.

“The data is there that over two million jobs have been created,” he insisted on Accra-based Citi TV’s Point of View programme on Wednesday, 14 August 2019.

But Mr Quashigah said on the same show that: “The government is only engaged in job replacement. People go on retirement and they are replaced by the government and that is what they are talking about.”

“New jobs have not been created, the positions available as a result of retirement are being replaced and that is not job creation,” he said.

He added: “I think that when you want to journey back to history, the facts must speak for that era. They [NPP government] talked about 600,000 jobs and they provided categorization and jobs that disguised unemployment, seasonal jobs among others. But at this time that we find ourselves in, figures have just been dangled without necessarily giving a very concrete breakdown. We challenged the Employment Minister to give us some form of breakdown which itself brought about debates.

He said the planting for foods and jobs has provided some 745,000 jobs but that figure has even been challenged by experts because that couldn’t be substantiated. When the President came to Parliament he shied away from the figure and gave 200,000 jobs under planting for food and jobs. Obviously, this appears that government was speaking at cross purposes”, he told Bernard Avle on The Point of View on Wednesday.

“We have heard the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry that they have created 300,000 jobs. He came and backtracked and gave a different figure. So clearly, there is a cacophony of data and information on job creation as far as this government is concerned. Not too long ago, the Vice President told us that there were 350,000 jobs that have been created. Now we are hearing from the Minister for Business Development that he has created about 4,700 jobs in his sector", he added.