Laying off workers inefficient solution – Labour expert

A Labour Expert, Yiadom Boakye Amponsah, has said government hinting of laying off public sector workers because the sector is full is not the way forward.

According to him, government will need to adopt a scientific approach to the issue and carry out a “matching skills” exercise to fix the affected workers in other sectors of the economy that need help.

Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo had earlier said “the public sector is full” and government “may even have to lay some off.”

Speaking at the Ghana Economic Forum on Monday, August 7, 2017 on the theme: ‘The Ghanaian-Owned Economy: 60 Years After Independence’, Mr Maafo said it was about time Ghanaian tertiary institutions started producing ‘technical brains’ who can be absorbed by the public sector so that pressure on the public sector will be reduce.

“They [graduates] only find jobs if the private sector grows, if the private sector expands, if the private sector becomes prosperous,” the Senior Minister said, adding: “If we do not get our mindset in this direction, then we are heading for trouble as a country.”

“Most people coming out of our universities,” he said, “are not technical brains.” “Most of them are in the humanities.”

“It is very expensive for the private sector to put up a credible technical university, so, most of the private sectors go into the training of marketing, sociology, economics. Those subjects can be easily taught without expensive laboratories and workshops.

Raecting to Mr Maafo’s comment in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra 100.5FM on Tuesday August 8, Mr Amponsah said: “Laying workers off because there are a lot of those workers there is not an efficient way of looking at it. If the workers are many, you will need to adopt a scientific approach to the issue and know whether you are matching the skills of those workers to the jobs available.

“Somebody may be having a degree in Agriculture but is working in a sector that has nothing to do with agriculture, whereas we need such people to fix in other agric-related positions to work and so the government should do such matching skills.”