High unemployment a national security threat - Allotey Jacobs

The former Central Regional Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Bernard Allotey Jacobs says the growing number of unemployed youth in the country poses a threat to national security.

According to him, the government must depoliticize its job creation policies in order to ensure that the country does not risk breeding criminals through the neglect of jobless youth.

“Nobody should think of it in political terms. This is purely a socio-economic problem which should be solved by the politician,” he said.

“Serious numbers like this in their youthful age between the ages of 20 and 35, unemployed become a hot magma from which all kinds of vices can be mined. If there is the chance for indulging in anything unconstitutional they will do it because they have to survive and that is how you look at it when security is concerned… For me it is a big security problem,” Bernard Allotey Jacobs exclusively told Reynold Agyemang on ‘Pae Mu Ka’ on Accra-based Kingdom FM 107.7

Allotey Jacobs chided successive policymakers for giving too much emphasis to the political implications of job creation program rather than the socio-economic benefits.

He also called for the restructuring of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) into an apolitical organization that must focus on researching and bringing to the fore all the challenges within the country that must be addressed.